Re: Can sets have order?

Hmm.  I can't help thinking about it.  I think I'm about to undermine my own 
argument.

ancestor::* returns a node set with a definite order, and what I've been 
arguing as an intrinsic order.

I challenged David about XPath's lack of an "order" function if node sets did 
not have an intrinsic order.

But probably it's not so simple.  What about

ancestor::* | /parent::*

Since XPath doesn't say anything about the order of the result of a union 
expression, I guess David is probably right about node sets as well.

I could say that the fact that nothing is said about this simply means that 
the intrinsic order is maintained, but perhaps that would just be stubbornness.

Oh well.  I must admit that even while implementing them, I had never even 
vaguely thought of node sets as being unordered.



-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Principal Consultant
uche.ogbuji@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx               +1 303 583 9900 x 101
Fourthought, Inc.                         http://Fourthought.com 
4735 East Walnut St, Ste. C, Boulder, CO 80301-2537, USA
Software-engineering, knowledge-management, XML, CORBA, Linux, Python



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