Re: Designs for XSLT functions (Was: Re: [xsl] RE: syntax sugar for call-template)

["Steve Muench" <Steve dot Muench at oracle dot com>]

With no offense to the idea, appending nodes seems so 
"JSP-ish" and 3GL-ish, and not very XSLT-ish to me.

Why couldn't you implement the function without
recursion with a technique like:

   <exsl:function>
     <xsl:variable name="foo">
       <xsl:for-each>
         <xsl:sort ... >
           <xsl:if test="5 <= position()">
             <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
           </xsl:if>
       </xsl:for-each>
     </xsl:variable>
     <exsl:return select="$foo"/>
   </exsl:function>

______________________________________________________________
Steve Muench, Lead XML Evangelist & Consulting Product Manager
BC4J & XSQL Servlet Development Teams, Oracle Rep to XSL WG
Author "Building Oracle XML Applications", O'Reilly
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/orxmlapp/

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Clark C. Evans" <cce@clarkevans.com>
To: "Jeni Tennison" <mail@jenitennison.com>
Cc: <xsl-list@lists.mulberrytech.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 11:58 AM
Subject: Re: Designs for XSLT functions (Was: Re: [xsl] RE: syntax sugar for call-template)


| On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, Jeni Tennison wrote:
| > <xsl:variable select="my:first-alphabetically($nodes, 5)" />
| >
| > <exsl:function name="my:first-alphabetically">
| >    <exsl:param name="nodes" />
| >    <exsl:param name="number" />
| >    <xsl:for-each select="$nodes">
| >       <xsl:sort />
| >       <xsl:if test="position() &lt;= $number">
| >          <exsl:append select="." />
| >       </xsl:if>
| >    </xsl:for-each>
| > </exsl:function>
| 
| Yes.  This is what I was intending.  In general, any 
| function which has to "build" a node-set could use
| this method.  The recursive variant you had below
| didn't look like fun at all; kinda nasty hoop to 
| jump to just do an "append".
| 
| What do you all think?  
| 
| Clark
| 
| 
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| 
| 


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