Re: Ridiculous XPath expression, can I reduce it?

Nick Vincent writes:
 > I found this XPath expression lurking in some code, and I'm thinking this
 > *may well* not be the most efficient way of performing this task, which
 > basically finds all the elements that exist below any given <input.form> tag
 > but not below an <input.link> tag.
 > 
 > Here is the horror:
 > 
 > .//input.hidden[count(ancestor::input.form[not(@done)])=1 and
 > not(@form.prefix) and not(ancestor::input.link)] | 

...

using "starts-with(name(.),'input.')" might reduce it somewhat

personally, I'd let all the elements get processed, but add a

 <xsl:if test="not(ancester::input.link)">
...
 </xsl:if>

condition in the template


Sebastian Rahtz


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