Re: Value-of, copy-of

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Subject: Re: Value-of, copy-of
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 12:51:14 -0500

Mike and Eric,

Mini XPath abbreviations lesson:

[1] '.' is short for 'self::node()'

so <xsl:copy-of select="."/> is saying "copy the context node".

[2] if no axis is given in the step of a location path, interpolate "child::"

so <xsl:copy-of select="node()"/> is short for <xsl:copy-of select="child::node()"/>, i.e. "copy the child nodes of the context node".

This is what accounts for the behavior you're seeing.

At 12:17 PM 2/27/2002, Mike wrote:

I changed my style sheet and got the results I wanted. I read on p.
187 of Kay's book (1st edition) that copy-of is gives you the content
without the opening and closing tag of the node, if you use it with

<xsl:copy-of select="node()"/>

Strictly speaking, it's not that the node is copied without its tags -- it's that the node is not copied, but all its children are. (Tags only appear when and if the result tree gets serialized as markup.)

He also says that xsl:copy-of does not allow you to controll what
nodes are being included in the output (p. 182), but xsl:copy does.
That was another problem I am having.

Yep: xsl:copy-of gives you a "deep copy" (all the way down from the node you copy), while xsl:copy only copies one level, while allowing you include more instructions (such as apply-templates) to graft more stuff under the node you've copied.

I hope that clears things up a bit,
Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
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Current Thread

Re: Value-of, copy-of, (continued)
- Mike Ferrando - Wed, 27 Feb 2002 12:14:08 -0500 (EST)
  - Wendell Piez - Wed, 27 Feb 2002 12:53:08 -0500 (EST) <=
- Joerg Pietschmann - Thu, 28 Feb 2002 03:32:43 -0500 (EST)
  - Mike Ferrando - Thu, 28 Feb 2002 09:43:04 -0500 (EST)
    - Peter Davis - Thu, 28 Feb 2002 13:24:59 -0500 (EST)

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Re: Value-of, copy-of, Mike Ferrando	Thread	Re: Value-of, copy-of, Joerg Pietschmann
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