RE: Simple XPath question

	Shouldn't the concatenated string Phil constructs below be the use
attribute of a key:
<key name="FL" match="PERSON" use="concat(string-length(@firstname),'
',concat(@firstname,@lastname))"/>

	Then the function
key('FL',concat(string-length(@firstname),' ',concat(@firstname,@lastname)))
could be used in an expression to find node sets of size > 1. That XT hasn't
implemented the key stuff yet limits my ability to test this conjecture.

	BTW, is this concat idiom the right way to construct a key whose
value spans more than one node?
Cheers,
David vun Kannon

-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Lanch [mailto:phil@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, November 22, 1999 8:31 AM
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Simple XPath question


David Carlisle wrote:
> 
> It doesn't work as
> >  following-sibling::PERSON/@lastname = ./@lastname and
> >  following-sibling::PERSON/@firstname = ./@firstname
> 
> does not force that it is the same following-sibling. ie it selects
> a PERSON if some later person has the same firstname, and a third person
> has the same lastname.  You can make the selection in various ways in
> xslt but I suspect Paul is right that you can't do it in a single
> xpath expression unless you give yourself an extension function that
> (say) returns a string uniquely generated from the firstname and
> lastname attributes of an element node, then you could do
> 
> dpc:bothnames(following-sibling::PERSON)=dpc:bothnames(PERSON)

Using just the built-in functions,
it's possible to get a string uniquely generated from the firstname and
lastname attributes of _one_ element node, e.g.:

concat(string-length(@firstname),' ',concat(@firstname,@lastname))

The problem is that we need your

dpc:bothnames(following-sibling::PERSON)

function to return a list of these uniquely generated strings,
and a list of strings
(as opposed to a list of nodes that happen to be text nodes)
is of course not a valid XPath type.

-- 

cheers

phil

'"having more of a life is one of the earliest
  and subtlest signs of mediocrity"' --- Musil


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
*****************************************************************************
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorized. 

If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution
or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is prohibited
and may be unlawful. When addressed to our clients any opinions or advice
contained in this email are subject to the terms and conditions expressed in
the governing KPMG client engagement letter.         
*****************************************************************************


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list