Re: testing for string and number in XSLT 2.0 was Re:

On Apr 8, 2005 9:55 PM, Michael Kay <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > What will really be useful is a function with an argument of item(),
> > that returns the real type of the argument.
> >
> > This would be trivial to achieve if same-arity function
> > overloading was allowed.
> >
> > Does anybody know of another way?
> 
> You can write
> 
> <xsl:choose>
> <xsl:when test="$arg instanceof xs:boolean">boolean</xsl:when>
> <xsl:when test="$arg instanceof xs:string">string</xsl:when>
> etc.

Until now I was under the impression that the "instance of" operator
is usable only if the value has been type-annotated as result of
validation against a specific xml schema (as described on page 287 of
the XPath 2.0 book), (which may not be the case with a significant
part of all transformations written and used in the real world).

Is my understanding of the applicability of the "instance of" operator wrong ?


Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev