Re: RE: String manipulation in XSLT

On 10/20/05, Arun Manta <arunm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Why is the support for string manipulation and regular expressions
non-existent in XSLT, when XML is all about text ( more than java etc.. )??

I think the classical argument would go along the lines that XML is
not all just about text, but also about structure.  Hence in a
document it is thought that things that are important like this will
be explicit, ie literally would have tags like
<package>abc.def/package><class>ghi</class>.  Much in the same lines,
XSLT (early versions) seems to have grown out of a perspective of
manipulating the document structures in one XML document to produce
another XML document.  There didn't seem to be much focus on
manipulating the actual content of the structures.

That being said, I wouldn't be surprised to see some of those features
in various extensions,  FXSL, and there is probably some in XSLT 2.0.

Of course, when I talk about the history of XSLT take it with a grain
of salt since I'm a rather  new to XSLT.

Jon Gorman