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Re: ANN: xpath1() scheme for XPointer

• To: Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@f...>
• Subject: Re: ANN: xpath1() scheme for XPointer
• From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>
• Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 10:57:21 -0500
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <E186Baq-00061z-00@m...>
• References: <E186Baq-00061z-00@m...>

At 8:13 AM -0700 10/28/02, Uche Ogbuji wrote:


>I'll really hate myself for being drawn into this reduction, but I see no
>reason why not:
>
>1) Use DOM load/save to read document
>2) Run DOM ops that change all element names to whatever you like
>3) pass DOM tree to XPath processor

This is fine. The user has chosen to modify the document and then 
they have given that modified document, here represented as a DOM, to 
the XPath processor. Perfectly OK.

What is not OK is when the user gives a stream of characters or bytes 
containing  a well-formed XML document to the processor, along with a 
query string, and the processor then changes all the names to Ethel 
(or resolves XIncludes) of its own volition, without the user asking 
it to do that. For similar reasons, it would be wrong for the 
processor to modify a DOM Document object the user gives it. The user 
can modify the DOM. The XPath processor/XSLT processor cannot. 1 2 3 
is OK. 1 3 3.5 is not:

1) Use DOM load/save to read document
3) pass DOM tree to XPath processor
	3.5) The XPath processor runs DOM ops to change all the 
element names to whatever it likes
	3.7) The XPath processor executes the query and returns the result.
-- 

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@m... | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
|          XML in a  Nutshell, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly, 2002)          |
|              http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian2/              |
|  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0596002920/cafeaulaitA/  |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
|  Read Cafe au Lait for Java News:  http://www.cafeaulait.org/      |
|  Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.cafeconleche.org/    |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+

• References:
  • Re: ANN: xpath1() scheme for XPointer
    • From: Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@f...>

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