Unfortunately, for a newcomer to the language, you've selected a rather
difficult problem. I'm not sure I even understand the problem fully, for
example I don't understand whether the order of elements in the two files is
important: I get the impression that it is. This leads to all sorts of
questions, for example if the sequence in the first file is

A B F G

and in the second is

A D G F

what output do you want?

Also, presumably the hierarchy is important, so

<second>A B C</second><second>D E F</second>

is not the same as

<second>A B C D</second><second>E F</second>

I think the solution to this is going to involve a recursive walk of the two
trees in parallel: that is, a recursive template which is passed two
parameters, being the current position in both trees; it then needs to do
some analysis of what it finds at those positions, and then call itself
recursively, having advanced one or both of the two positions.

That's just a sketch, I don't have time to work it out more fully. It isn't
an exercise I would set on a beginner's course.

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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Thomas Tarpin-Lyonnet [mailto:bartleby@xxxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 31 August 2005 03:41
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  Conditional merge of 2 XML files
> 
> Hello,
> I'm a newbie in XSL and I would like to do something with 2 
> XML files and i
> can't manage to do it.
> Here is my problem.
> I have 2 XML files, file_1.xml and file_2.xml structured as follow:
> file_1.xml:
> <?xml version="1.0"?>
> <firstTag>
>   <secondTag>
>     <thirdTag> Thomas </thirdTag>
>     <thirdTag> Tarpin </thirdTag>
>   </secondTag>
>   <secondTag>
>     <thirdTag> Pipo </thirdTag>
>     <thirdTag> Pipolaki </thirdTag>
>   </secondTag>
> </firstTag>
> 
> file_2.xml:
> <?xml version="1.0"?>
> <firstTag>
>   <secondTag>
>     <thirdTag here="Yes"> Thomas </thirdTag>
>     <thirdTag here="Yes"> - </thirdTag>
>     <thirdTag here="Yes"> Lyonnet </thirdTag>
>   </secondTag>
>   <secondTag>
>     <thirdTag here="Yes"> Pipo </thirdTag>
>     <thirdTag here="Yes"> Pipolaki </thirdTag>
>   </secondTag>
> </firstTag>
> 
> I would like to be able to do the diff between the two files 
> and generate
> another xml that will be the result of the merging of the two 
> files only if
> there are some thirdTag that are defined in file_1.xml and missing in
> file_2.xml. Otherwise if the two files contains the same 
> thirdTag then the
> result.xml will be the same as file_2.xml.
> The resulting file would be something like that:
> result.xml:
> <?xml version="1.0"?>
> <firstTag>
>   <secondTag>
>     <thirdTag here="Yes"> Thomas </thirdTag>
>     <thirdTag here="No"> Tarpin </thirdTag>
>     <thirdTag here="Yes"> - </thirdTag>
>     <thirdTag here="Yes"> Lyonnet </thirdTag>
>   </secondTag>
>   <secondTag>
>     <thirdTag here="Yes"> Pipo </thirdTag>
>     <thirdTag here="Yes"> Pipolaki </thirdTag>
>   </secondTag>
> </firstTag>
> 
> I know that i have to use the document() function but i don't 
> know how.
> How can i do that ? I'm a bit confused, i tried but i can't.
> Anybody to help me ?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Thomas
> 
> *********************************
> *     Thomas Tarpin-Lyonnet     *
> * http://jaccal.sourceforge.net *
> *********************************