Re: deep copy without attributes

On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 12:02 AM, Graydon <graydon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 10:34:31PM +0100, Ihe Onwuka scripsit:
>> On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 8:48 PM, Graydon <graydon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > You can't make the solution simpler than the problem.
>>
>> But you can make the solution more complicated than the problem.
>>
>> Say I wanted to copy a directory structure but not carry over the
>> symbolic links.
>>
>>  I'd expect to be able to accomplish that  by setting an option on my
>> copy command rather than having to implement a recursive shell script.
>
> Symbolic links, in XML terms, would be elements from some other tree
> inserted by reference.  XML doesn't do that, and if it did do that,
> there'd be a case for some kind of "is it really there, or referenced?"
> distinction.  (Attributes, by file system analogy, would be things like
> mtime and ctime.)
>

 it's not hard to find another example (try hidden files) - should I
be forced to write a recursive shell  depending on whether I want to
exclude or include them in the copy?

>
> <xsl:template match="node()">
>     <xsl:copy>
>         <xsl:apply-templates select="node()"/>
>     </xsl:copy>
> </xsl:template>
>
> does that; it's not recursive, it's a single template.  It'll get
> applied to all the nodes, but that's the magic of the XSLT declarative
f>

if it were only about  whether cognoscenti can think up an elegant
solution - we'd still all be doing Muenchian Grouping.

I've not been paying attention to 3.0 but I'd be looking at copy-of
and thinking it is ripe for accepting an anonymous function/template
that is applied as it traverses it's hierarchy. which would be another
way of addressing the issue.