Re: "if-condition-return something" idiom : is it pos

On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 9:12 PM, Liam R E Quin liam@xxxxxx <
xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Mon, 2014-06-16 at 13:00 +0000, Kerry, Richard richard.kerry@xxxxxxxx
> wrote:
> > I tend to view (*) xsl:choose as similar to C's "switch", which needs
> > to do a single calculation to work out which branch to run.
> > (*)  I may well be wrong in this.....
>
> xsl:choose is like a sequence of C if statements in practice, and is
> what yu want for your C++-like example.
>
> But I think it better to think of xsl:choose in the mathematical sense,
> e.g.
>
>  A := f(x)
>        0 when x <= 1
>       17 when x <= 7
>        A(x - 1) . A(x - 2) when x^2 + 1 is prime
>       31x / 7 otherwise
>
> That is, I prefer to think of XSLT as a functional language in which one
> is describing the end result rather than as a procedural language with
> loops and returns.
>
> There's no concept of an "early return" from a mathematical function,
> nor from an XSLT one.
>
>
but the value of f(x) above depends on the order in which the sub-clauses
are evaluated. Is that permissible in a mathematical function?