RE: keys and idrefs - XSLT2 request?

Either to extend the key function in some way to handle idrefs,
or to permit a key definition to take in all attributes of type idrefs?
(I could see the problem where I have a CDATA attribute with spaces,
but surely idrefs are a bit special?)

Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2000 04:31:02 +0800
To: XSL Editors <xsl-editors@xxxxxx>
From: "G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Feature request: tokenized key table access

Hi folks!

I've been using the key() function a lot lately, and I've been using it to store name tokens similar to (usually) ID values. I would find it helpful if there were a way at declaration time to instruct the processor to tokenize the string and make individual key table entries with each individual token as the string value.

Also, I understand the need for the second argument of the key() function to be a verbatim string, but I would like a function that would tokenize the second argument as id() does and return all key table members with a value of one of the name tokens.

I am aware that a recursive function could walk through the arguments and tokenize them and when done act on the built-up node set ... but it is quite awkward. As for the declaration, there is no way to accomplish that.

So, not to ask for the following syntax, but I would envisage something like the following for topic maps where attribute arguments are strings of multiple name tokens:

<xsl:key name="assocs" match="assoc" use-tokenized="@types | @other"/>

- create as many entries in table as tokens in all given strings

<xsl:variable name="assocs" select="key-tokenized('assocs',refs/@ref)"/>

- return as many entries from table as tokens in all given strings

Thanks!

.............. Ken

--
G. Ken Holman                      mailto:gkholman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Crane Softwrights Ltd.               http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/s/
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