• From: Kay Michael <Michael.Kay@i...>
• To: "'Tim Bray'" <tbray@t...>, Kay Michael <Michael.Kay@i...>, xml-dev@i...
• Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 18:54:37 +0100

> >You can certainly write <ELEM attr=""/> in XML, and this is 
> distinct from
> >writing <ELEM/>; but be aware that there are a number of 
> interfaces in the
> >DOM and in XSL that do not distinguish the two cases.
> 
> Maybe XSL, not the DOM.  (I hope). -T.
>
REC-DOM-Level-1-19981001, section 1.2, subsection "Interface Element",
"Methods",
"getAttribute": "returns the attribute value as a string, or the empty
string if that attribute does not have a specified value". 

Not all products comply, last time I tried DataChannel it returned null
rather than empty string.

To distinguish an absent attribute from an attribute whose value is "" you
have to use the more complex interface getAttributeNode().

Mike Kay  

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