This XSL...

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="xml"/>

<xsl:template match="/">
	<xsl:apply-templates select="*"/>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="*">
	<xsl:if test=". != ''">
		<xsl:copy>
			<xsl:element name="name()">
				<xsl:copy-of select="@*"/>
				<xsl:apply-templates/>
			</xsl:element>
		</xsl:copy>
	</xsl:if>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Turns this XML...

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="US-ASCII"?>
<bdy>
   <section name="foo"><p>not empty</p><p></p></section>
   <section><section><p></p></section></section>
</bdy>

Into this...

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<bdy>
   <section name="foo"><p>not empty</p></section>   
</bdy>

Notice the slight modification of the source to show that you need to
add the <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/> to the xsl to ensure that you copy
the attributes of those tags that evaluate to true in the <xsl:if...>
tag.

Best of luck!

<M:D/>

-----Original Message-----
From: David Holden [mailto:dh@xxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 6:37 AM
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject:  Recursively removing empty tags from deepest child
upwards.

Hello,

 I'm trying to remove certain empty tags from a set a files

e.g., simplified example

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="US-ASCII"?>
<bdy>
   <section><p>not empty</p><p></p></section>
   <section><section><p></p></section></section>
</bdy>


I want

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="US-ASCII"?>
<bdy>
   <section><p>not empty</p></section>
</bdy>


i.e. in this example in the first section the empty <p></p> is removed
and the 
whole of the second section removed since it contains just an empty p
and 
empty section elements.


So far I have



<xsl:stylesheet
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
 xmlns:xalan="http://xml.apache.org/xslt"
 exclude-result-prefixes="xalan"
 version="1.0"
 >
  <!-- output format xml -->
  <xsl:output
   method="xml"
   encoding="US-ASCII">

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

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:apply-templates mode="copy"/>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="@*|node()" mode="copy">
    <xsl:copy>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()" mode="copy"/>
    </xsl:copy>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="//section|//p" mode="copy">
    <xsl:choose>
      <xsl:when test="normalize-space(.)">
        <xsl:copy>
          <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()" mode="copy"/>
        </xsl:copy>
      </xsl:when>
      <xsl:when test="count(./*)">
        <xsl:copy>
          <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()" mode="copy"/>
        </xsl:copy>
      </xsl:when>
      <xsl:otherwise>
      </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>


But this only removes the deepest empty child element.


giving 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="US-ASCII"?>
<bdy><section><p>not
empty</p></section><section><section/></section></bdy>



I need to be able to recurse so that after removing the deepest child if
then 
checks to seem if its parent is empty etc...



anyone help,

 thanks.

 Dave.




-- 
Dr. David Holden. (Systems Developer)
Crystallography Journals Online: <http://journals.iucr.org>

Thanks in advance:-
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