Re: WARNING org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: The child a

On Tue, 2014-05-13 at 19:16 +0000, Kulas, Jack jkulas@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> I was getting the following warning when I'd run a transformation
> within Arbortext Editor 6.1-F000, which uses the Saxon 9.1.0.5 XSLT
> transformation engine:
> 
> WARNING org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: The child axis starting at a text node will never select anything
> 
> When I replaced this template
> 
>     <xsl:template match="text()" mode="func">
>        <xsl:value-of select="."/>
>         <xsl:apply-templates mode="func"/>
>     </xsl:template>
> 
> with this one
> 
>     <xsl:template match="*" mode="func">
>         <xsl:apply-templates mode="func"/>
>     </xsl:template>

The first template matches text nodes -- text() -- and calls
apply-templates which, in the absence of a select attribute, will be
applied to child elements. However, a text node in XPath cannot contain
elements, so that apply-templates will never do anything.

The second template matches *, which is short for "any element", so it
explicitly does not match text nodes, and elements _can_ contain other
elements of course.

The reason there was no change is presumably because the default
template for text nodes looke a bit like
<xsl:template match="text()">
  <xsl:value-of select="." />
</xsl:template>
which, after you ignore the useless call to apply-templates, is the same
as what you have there. And the template with * is probably not being
called, unless there were elements in your document that no other
template matched.

Liam


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