RE: Mistake in tokenizing under Saxon 8.2

The spaces that you get in your output are not being copied from the input,
they are being generated by virtue of the rule that a single space is
inserted between adjacent atomic values delivered in the result of a content
constructor. This space isn't inserted between a string and a node, only
between two strings.

(The reason for this rule is primarily for the case where you are generating
list-valued simple content, e.g. ("red", "blue", "green"). It's less
satisfactory when generating complex content. It means that you need to
understand the rather subtle distinction between a string and a text node:
<xsl:value-of select="'a'"/> outputs a text node, while <xsl:sequence
select="'a'"/> outputs a string. <xsl:copy-of/> produces whatever it is
given, which in this case is a string. Text nodes are output without
generating separator spaces.)

I think that if you output a text node containing a single space either side
of the <a> element, you will get the required effect. You can do this with

<xsl:text> </xsl:text> 

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nicholas Hemley [mailto:Nicholas.Hemley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 21 January 2005 09:50
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  Mistake in tokenizing under Saxon 8.2
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I presume that I have made a mistake somewhere in the stylesheet when
> using the tokenize function under Saxon 8.2 - for some reason I am
> loosing the whitespace chars around the matched regular expression.
> 
> For example, the following pattern:
> text text [link,alt,link_text] text
> 
> should be transformed to:
> 
> text text <a href="link" alt="alt">link text</a> text
> 
> BUT
> 
> I am loosing the whitespasce characters around the <a> as follows:
> 
> text text<a href="link" alt="alt">link text</a>text
>               ^                                               
>          
>  ^
> Why is this please? All the other whitespace chars are copied OK, even
> though I am tokenising on whitespace.
> 
> If I use a &nbsp; in the stylesheet to compensate for the 
> loss, it adds
> two spaces, not one, which is wierd, so this is not currently a viable
> solution.
> 
> Any input appreciated!
> 
> Many thanks,
> Nic.
> 
> Appendix: Stylesheet Snippet
> 
>   <xsl:template match="/html/body/P|p">
>     <!-- copy node plus select contents -->
>     <xsl:copy>
> 
>               <xsl:variable name="tokens" select="tokenize(.,'\s+')"/>
> 
>               <xsl:for-each select="$tokens">
> 
>                 <xsl:choose>
>                   <xsl:when test='matches(.,"\[(.*),(.*),(.*)\]")'>
> 
>                     <xsl:variable name="elValue" select="."/>
> 
>                       <xsl:analyze-string select="$elValue"
> regex="\[(.*),(.*),(.*)\]">
> 
>                         <xsl:matching-substring>
>                           <a href="{regex-group(1)}">
>                                   <xsl:attribute name='alt'>
>                                     <xsl:value-of
> select='replace(regex-group(3), "_"," ")'/>
>                                   </xsl:attribute>
>                                   <xsl:value-of
> select='replace(regex-group(2), "_"," ")'/>
>                            </a>
>                         </xsl:matching-substring>
> 
>                       </xsl:analyze-string>
> 
>                   </xsl:when>
>                   <xsl:otherwise>
>                     <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
>                   </xsl:otherwise>
>                 </xsl:choose>
>               </xsl:for-each>
>     </xsl:copy>
>   </xsl:template>
> 
> 
> 
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