Re: [xsl] Value-of, copy-of

[Wendell Piez <wapiez at mulberrytech dot com>]

Mike and Eric,

Mini XPath abbreviations lesson:

[1] '.' is short for 'self::node()'

so <xsl:copy-of select="."/> is saying "copy the context node".

[2] if no axis is given in the step of a location path, interpolate "child::"

so <xsl:copy-of select="node()"/> is short for <xsl:copy-of 
select="child::node()"/>, i.e. "copy the child nodes of the context node".

This is what accounts for the behavior you're seeing.

At 12:17 PM 2/27/2002, Mike wrote:
>I changed my style sheet and got the results I wanted. I read on p.
>187 of Kay's book (1st edition) that copy-of is gives you the content
>without the opening and closing tag of the node, if you use it with
>
><xsl:copy-of select="node()"/>

Strictly speaking, it's not that the node is copied without its tags -- 
it's that the node is not copied, but all its children are. (Tags only 
appear when and if the result tree gets serialized as markup.)

>He also says that xsl:copy-of does not allow you to controll what
>nodes are being included in the output (p. 182), but xsl:copy does.
>That was another problem I am having.

Yep: xsl:copy-of gives you a "deep copy" (all the way down from the node 
you copy), while xsl:copy only copies one level, while allowing you include 
more instructions (such as apply-templates) to graft more stuff under the 
node you've copied.

I hope that clears things up a bit,
Wendell


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