[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Concerned about the increasing reliance on XPath
Just realised the folly of asking for another shorthand though, since, as Andrew pointed out, we have the shorthand *: there already in XPath 2.0, so I can just write /*:foo/... as shorthand for /*local-name()='foo'/... Pity I can't do this in XPath 1.0 though. ---- Stephen D Green On 9 May 2011 18:21, Stephen D Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com> wrote: > What would help would be another shorthand for "/*local-name()='foo'/...", > say something like "/{foo}/..." or some other parenthesis-based shorthand. > > I remember how when pocket calculators came out there was the issue > of operator precedence. It was solved when they added brakets to the > key pad so you could make the precedence explicit (the implicit precedence > differed between calculators so the same calculation key-press sequence > was giving different results in different calculators). It's a bit > like that here. > Expecting people to know the default operator precedence for their > calculator before pressing keys would be unrealistic - and there the problem > was less severe than here, I think, because it was only more complex > calculation sequences where the problem was apparent; here it is simple > ones too. > > ---- > Stephen D Green > > > > On 9 May 2011 17:10, Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com> wrote: >> On 09/05/2011 16:43, Stephen D Green wrote: >>> >>> I tried to think of a way to write the XPath expression so >>> it gives the same result whatever the version of XPath >> >> You can write >> >> /example:a/@version-id = 0.4 >> >> or >> >> /example:a/@version-id = '0.4' >> >> depending on which you mean [*], in both cases using the API of the >> processor to ensure that prefix "example" is bound to namespace URI >> "http://www.example.com". >> >> Writing it in a way that doesn't depend on any namespace bindings set up via >> the API is much harder - XPath is designed on the assumption that the >> bindings will be set up externally, and you're going against the grain if >> you don't want to do that. >> >> Michael Kay >> Saxonica >> >> [*] the first will also match version-id="0.40", the second won't. Yes, >> XPath is not a language designed for people who find such fine distinctions >> irritating - the "do what I meant, not what I said" brigade. >> >> >> _______________________________________________________________________ >> >> XML-DEV is a publicly archived, unmoderated list hosted by OASIS >> to support XML implementation and development. To minimize >> spam in the archives, you must subscribe before posting. >> >> [Un]Subscribe/change address: http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/ >> Or unsubscribe: xml-dev-unsubscribe@lists.xml.org >> subscribe: xml-dev-subscribe@lists.xml.org >> List archive: http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ >> List Guidelines: http://www.oasis-open.org/maillists/guidelines.php >> >> >
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