Have you tried > instead of gt?

I didnbt see a formal definition in the XPath 2 spec for > like the
one for gt, http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-functions/#func-numeric-greater-than

And I didnbt see where itbs mentioned that XPath 1 comparison operators
such as > continue to work in XPath 2 like they are defined in XPath 1.

But what > did in XPath 1 and continues to do in XPath 2 is to try to
convert each of its arguments (or their string values) to a numeric
value using number(). So using > instead of gt might give you the
expressive conciseness that you were looking for.

Another approach is probably to use schema-aware transformations where
you should be able to declare each attributebs type.

Gerrit


On 29.07.2015 20:54, Jorge . chocolate.camera@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> When comparing numeric values of node attributes to a double, I have
> to explicitly convert those attribute values too into a double or else
> Saxon complains that I cannot compare an untyped value to a double. It
> gets kind of tiring having to do so on each comparison when you are
> comparing lots of values a lot of times, and it makes the code less
> readable.
> 
> I have this tree of nodes:
> 
>     <root width="10">
>         <item  x="1.0" width="3.5"/>
>         <item  x="6.5" width="1.5"/>
>         <item  x="3.5" width="3.0"/>
>     </root>
> 
> and I want to select items not falling cleanly in either the left or
> right half of <root> (the 3rd item being so).
> 
> So, being <root> the context node, I try to select those items with:
> 
>     <xsl:variable name="WIDTH" select="@width" as="xs:double"/>
>     <xsl:sequence select="item[@x lt $WIDTH div 2 and @x + @width gt
> $WIDTH div 2]"/>
> 
> but Saxon complains:
> 
>> Warning: on line 9 of stylesheet.xsl:
>>   Comparison of xs:untypedAtomic? to xs:double will fail unless the first operand is empty
>> Warning: on line 9 of stylesheet.xsl:
>>   Comparison of xs:untypedAtomic? to xs:double will fail unless the first operand is empty
>> Error on line 9 of stylesheet.xsl:
>>   XPTY0004: Cannot compare xs:untypedAtomic to xs:double
>>   in built-in template rule
>> Transformation failed: Run-time errors were reported
> 
> If I instead convert each attribute value into a double before the comparison:
> 
>     <xsl:sequence select="item[number(@x) lt $WIDTH div 2 and
> number(@x) + number(@width) gt $WIDTH div 2]"/>
> 
> I get the expected result.
> 
> Considering that the input tree actually is generated some steps above
> via an identity copy and stored into a variable, is there a way to
> create it so that Saxon does know that those attribute values are
> doubles, and therefore not needing to be wrapping each attribute
> mention with number() every single time I want to compare numbers?
> 
> I am using XSLT 2.0, Saxon-HE 9.2.1.2J.