Re: Use of separator

Hello,
please excuse me for not giving a complete example of the source file.
Here is my second attempt ... I made a little testbed which consists
of one source file and two xslt stylesheets. Here is the source:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
	<wrapper>
		<node1>Text1</node1>
		<node2>Text2</node2>
		<node3>Text3</node3>
	</wrapper>
	<wrapper>
		<node1>Text1</node1>
		<node2>Text2</node2>
		<node3>Text3</node3>
	</wrapper>
	<wrapper>
		<node1>Text1</node1>
		<node2>Text2</node2>
		<node3>Text3</node3>
	</wrapper>
</root>

Stylesheet 1:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
	<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
	<xsl:template match="wrapper">
		<helloWorld>
			<xsl:value-of select="element()/text()" separator=", "/>
		</helloWorld>
	</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Output of Stylesheet 1:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<helloWorld>Text1Text2Text3</helloWorld>
<helloWorld>Text1Text2Text3</helloWorld>
<helloWorld>Text1Text2Text3</helloWorld>

Stylesheet 2:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
	<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
	<xsl:template match="wrapper">
		<helloWorld>
			<xsl:value-of select="*" separator=", "/>
		</helloWorld>
	</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Output of Stylesheet 2:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<helloWorld>Text1, Text2, Text3</helloWorld>
<helloWorld>Text1, Text2, Text3</helloWorld>
<helloWorld>Text1, Text2, Text3</helloWorld>

Although the output files are no valid xml due to the lack of a root
element they show the different use of the separator.

Regards,
Georg

you didn't show your input so i'll have to guess,

if the doc is

<x>
 <a>one<!-- here -->two</a>
 <a>three</a>
 <a>four</a>
</x>

and the current node is x then

element()/text() will select four text nodes with values "one" "two"
      "three" "four"
so
      <xsl:value-of select="element()/text()" separator=", "/>
will generate one text node with value
"one, two, three, four"

* will select three element nodes, each with name a and with string values
"onetwo" "three" "four" so

<xsl:value-of select="*" separator=", "/>
will generate one text node with string value
"onetwo", "three", "four"

> Now i wonder why the result of the first expression contains no
> separator while the other one does. Any explanations?
presumably it selected a sequence of length 1, but without seeing the
input it's hard to say.

David