Cart
[Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries]
Playing tag-team with David....
At 06:33 PM 3/1/2005, he wrote: datetest = (date >= 20050228) Note that if the test were not relative to the context node, everything would work fine. That is, if instead of needing to test "date >= 20050228" (is the value of any date child element >= 20050228?), you needed to test "//date >= 20050228" (is the value of any date in the document >= 20050228?), then you could do: datetest = (//date >= 20050228) $datetest would be a Boolean with value "true" or "false", allowing you to perform the test anywhere the variable is in scope just by saying test="$datetest" or "expr[$datetest]". Since the test is an absolute, global test, it makes sense to bind it to a variable at the top level so it has global scope. I've used this technique on occasion and it works fine. The local version, scoped to a template, also works, but naturally gives you less bang for your buck (how many times do you have to do the same test in a given template)? The essence of why this won't work with a relative expression inside a predicate is that the expression "date >= 20050228" is not actually the same test every time: when the context node is different, the test is different. This would be true in XSLT 2.0 too, which is why this limitation persists (although being able to define a function, as David shows, provides another way to approach the problem). Cheers, Wendell
|
