[XSL-LIST Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] How is memory allocated in recursive XSLT templates?
Hello Everyone,
Please treat this as a low priority, academic question. I am interested in finding out what data structure is used internally to represent each template's data in situations where the template is called recursively, because I was thinking that infinite recursion is not possible if memory is allocated in the form of a stack. I would like to think of templates as equivalent to a function/ method in other programming languages for the purpose of this post. I was reading on recursive functions, and learned that each function call's data is stored in a stack frame , and at the end of the last function call, the data of each function call is poped out of the stack frame and returned in reverse order --- LIFO. If a stack is used then, it poses memory constraints when stack frames run out, this is why it is important to have a termination condition. And when there's a termination condition it is not infinite recursion. In case of XSLT the termination condition is the depth of an XML structure (it cannot be infinite), or it could be a constraint specified by the author of the XSLT stylesheet. There's an illustration which shows how memory is allocated in a stack frame for each function call at the bottom of this page : http://www.oopweb.com/Algorithms/Documents/PLDS210/Volume/stacks.html I made a naive attempt to calculate the factorial of a given number recursively with XSL templates, but soon realized that there's no return statement. I know that XSLT has functions, I haven't read about them yet, but I plan to soon. Here's what I tried (it's incomplete): <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:template name="factorialTemplate"> <xsl:param name="n"/> <xsl:choose> <xsl:when test="$n=0"> </xsl:when> <xsl:otherwise> <xsl:call-template name="factorialTemplate"> <xsl:with-param name="n" select="$n-1"/> </xsl:call-template> </xsl:otherwise> </xsl:choose> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> I was trying to achieve the equivalent of the recursive Factorial function illustrated here with procedural programming: http://www.oopweb.com/Algorithms/Documents/PLDS210/Volume/recursion.html Any thoughts on whether the memory is allocated in terms of Stack with recursive template/ or recursive XLST functions is appreciated. edit: before I hit the send button, I realized that Google has some info on this, I plan to read this http://www.gca.org/papers/xmleurope2000/pdf/s35-03.pdf -Thank you Rashmi
|
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|