RE: A better way to build a comma-delimited list

This may be a naive answer (given the previous posts), 
but it seems like you're simply looking at the addition
of text the wrong direction. You need to add ", " *before*
the 2nd, 3rd (and ultimately all but the first) columns. 
Would it work better if you did the test *before* the 
<xsl:value-of> and tested to see if this is not the first? 
If so, add the comma and space and then output the value of
the column. 

Sara

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Sands [mailto:WonkoWatson@xxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2002 7:35 PM
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  A better way to build a comma-delimited list
> 
> 
> I have some XSLT that builds a SQL select statement from several input
> documents. Here's a fragment that builds the column list by getting
> each distinct column name from a separate file ($pbsdef) and checking
> that is is defined in another file (referenced by variable $dbdef).
> 
>    <xsl:text>select </xsl:text>
>    <xsl:for-each 
> select="document($pbsdef)/pbsdef/column[not(@dbcolumn=precedin
> g-sibling::column/@dbcolumn)]">
>       <xsl:variable name="p" select="position()"/>
>       <xsl:variable name="l" select="last()"/>
>       <xsl:variable name="dbcolumn" select="@dbcolumn"/>
>       <xsl:for-each select="$dbdef">
>          <xsl:if test="key('dbdef-cols', $dbcolumn)">
>             <xsl:value-of select="$dbcolumn"/>
>             <xsl:if test="$p &lt; $l">
>                <xsl:text>, </xsl:text>
>             </xsl:if>
>          </xsl:if>
>       </xsl:for-each>
>    </xsl:for-each>
> 
> The output of this fragment might be:
> 
>  select col1, col2, col3
> 
> This all works fine, except for one case - where the last column is
> not found in the $dbdef file (where the 'if test=key' fails). Then I
> get:
> 
>  select col1, col2,
> 
> The position() < last() test doesn't work here. Can someone see a
> better way to avoid that last comma?
> 
> Thanks,
> John Sands
> 
> 
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> 

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