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Re: Porting own template language to xslt

Subject: Re: Porting own template language to xslt
From: "António Mota" <amsmota@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 13:18:44 +0000
nick mota
Wow, nice explanation, i too used to make that confusion, but no i see
the light...


On 16/03/06, Nick Fitzsimons <nick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Thu, 2006-03-16 at 11:16 +0000, Michael Kay wrote:
> >> I think that using xsl:for-each is the natural way to do this.
> >
> > Interestingly I just had a Prof of CS call me for help (he's learning
> > XSLT) and he thought it was completely unnatural -- semantically --
> > to use for-each just to switch contexts for a single node; that it
> > should be kept for iteration over 1+ nodes.
> >
>
> I would have expected a Prof of CS to realise that XSLT doesn't do
> iteration. The XSLT 1.0 standard states:
>
> "The xsl:for-each instruction contains a template, which is instantiated
> for each node selected by the expression specified by the select
> attribute. The select attribute is required. The expression must evaluate
> to a node-set."
> <http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt#for-each>
>
> As it is perfectly acceptable for a set to have 0, 1 or more members,
> there's no reason xsl:for-each shouldn't be used to instantiate a template
> even when it is known in advance that the node-set will have only one
> member. I get the impression that this Prof is attributing a semantic
> value to xsl:for-each which is not present, and makes no sense, in a
> declarative language.
>
> It appears that the Prof is thinking in terms of
>
> for (int i = 0; i < 1; i++) {
>    /* do stuff only once */
> }
>
> which is clearly a waste of time; but in XSLT, using
>
> <xsl:for-each select="element[1]">
>   <!-- do stuff to only one thing -->
> </xsl:for-each>
>
> is perfectly reasonable.
>
> A lot of people fall into the trap of applying procedural concepts to
> XSLT, so he's not alone; but thinking of xsl:for-each as somehow iterating
> in the same way as a "for" construct in a C-type language can only lead to
> misery. It's the reason so many people write to this group asking "How can
> I break out of this loop" and are often confused by the
> Matrix-paraphrasing response, "There is no loop."
>
> Regards,
>
> Nick.
> --
> Nick Fitzsimons
> http://www.nickfitz.co.uk/

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