Re: xsl:if test = empty string, returns true

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Subject: Re: xsl:if test = empty string, returns true
From: "G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 13 May 2012 17:32:43 -0400

At 2012-05-13 23:17 +0200, Jorge wrote:

> And, you are looking for the adjacent node (which in your example is a text node), rather than the adjacent element (unless you are invoking saxon with the option to strip white-space text nodes from your input, in which case that is not true).

No I wasn't invoking saxon with such option, but did try nevertheless to use:

<xsl:strip-space elements="plist dict"/>

and

<xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>

Still, even with or without those, if I assigned a value to the string, the function did capture it and showed it in the output of my original stylesheet in either case. Why does following::node()[1] return the string's value in both cases then?

I see now that saxon was doing it by default. When I add -strip:none to the invocation then your code fails.

> BTW, I very rarely ever have to address text() nodes

Well, I did that to try to force the function to return a string instead of a tree :-/

But the normalize-space() returns a string, so how you address the content is irrelevant. It isn't that you were addressing a text node that a text node was returned, it was that your function was returning a tree with a text node created from the string output from normalize-space(). Your code was expecting the string to be returned. It is very subtle and it comes up in class.

As you can see there are still concepts of XSL that I am not quite grasping yet.

If you have the time I have posted 5 free hours of my XSLT training video here:

http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/links/udemy.htm

... where you do not need to create a username in order to view free content ... just close the sign-up dialogue box. The free stuff is mostly introductory, so this particular issue is not covered, but you might find other tips.

More than appreciated. I simply wanted to discourage answers that focused on issues that did not address my main question. Please excuse me for the prejudice.

No apology necessary ... I'm just trying to keep things found in the archive from pointing readers the "wrong" way.

Good luck in your project!

. . . . . . . . . . Ken

--
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Current Thread
Re: xsl:if test = empty string, returns true, (continued) Liam R E Quin - 13 May 2012 20:25:06 -0000 Jorge - 13 May 2012 20:43:19 -0000 G. Ken Holman - 13 May 2012 20:42:01 -0000 Jorge - 13 May 2012 21:17:26 -0000 G. Ken Holman - 13 May 2012 21:33:49 -0000 <= Michael Kay - 14 May 2012 14:53:11 -0000 Jorge - 15 May 2012 14:03:13 -0000 G. Ken Holman - 15 May 2012 17:26:53 -0000

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