Re: Xalan equivalent for <msxsl:script>?

Hi Glen,

> 1) As a sanity check, is this pretty much the way to calculate the
> largest value in a list? Is there any quick XPath/XSLT instruction
> that would do the same thing without me needing to resort to
> functions or recursion?

Two ways. An XPath expression that only selects a book if there are no
other books that have a higher cost, and gets the cost of that one:

  <xsl:value-of select="book[not(../book/cost &gt; cost)]/cost" />

And a loop that only uses the first value from the sorted list:

  <xsl:for-each select="book">
     <xsl:sort select="cost" data-type="number" order="descending" />
     <xsl:if test="position() = 1">
        <xsl:value-of select="cost" />
     </xsl:if>
  </xsl:for-each>

If you only have a few books per author, then the first is nice and
simple.  If you have more, then the for each with the sort is more
efficient.  If you have lots then recursion or a function like you
have will be best.  Don't ask me what 'few', 'more' and 'lots' mean -
you should try it out with your particular source XML to see what
gives the best performance.

I hope that helps,

Jeni

---
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com/



 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list