Re: [xsl] ancestor question

[Wendell Piez <wapiez at mulberrytech dot com>]

At 04:03 PM 10/1/01, Francis wrote:
>Wendell Piez wrote:
> >
> > The trick is, that the value of a node-set is the string value of the
> > *first* node in the node-set (in document order).
> >
>I'm feeling picky picky picky today... just in case anyone reads the
>above sentence out of its original context (now, how could that happen?)

Oh, maybe if someone quoted you ... :->

>may I point out that while it is true for xsl:value-of, it is not always
>true - exceptions (ranging from the obvious to the less obvious) include
>xsl:apply-templates, xsl:variable and document()

Good point. I should have been clearer. I meant "value" in the sense of 
"string-value", as used in the XPath spec. 
(http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath#dt-string-value, 
http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath#function-string etc.)

Those other things return node-sets (the document() function), assign 
values (of any datatype) to variables, copy to the result tree, create 
fragments etc. and in many cases there are "values" floating around.

I guess it's so handy always to be able to know what the string-value is, 
that I just think of "values" meaning ways of getting access to the data in 
the source tree ... comes out as strings. Misleading, I guess.

(On the other hand, you could say the value of something is what you get 
when you ask for ...say... value-of...)

I'll try to say "string-value" from now on.

Cheers,
Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@mulberrytech.com
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