This is the mail archive of the
xsl-list@mulberrytech.com
mailing list .
Re: In Tears... (learning XPath)
- To: xsl-list at mulberrytech dot com
- Subject: Re: In Tears... (learning XPath)
- From: "Christopher R. Maden" <crism at lexica dot net>
- Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 12:02:21 -0700
- Reply-To: xsl-list at mulberrytech dot com
At 11:45 14-07-2000 -0500, Jason A. Buss wrote:
>I cannot, for the life of me, get the expression syntax correct.
>
>concat(sect1,$sect1num,.htm)... failed.
>concat("sect1",$sect1num,".htm")... failed.
>concat("sect1"$sect1num".htm")... failed.
>concat(sect1{,$sect1num,.htm}*)... failed.
>concat(sect1,$sect1num,.htm*)... failed.
>
>I know this is a newbie question, but I am stuck here.
>The XPath spec uses concat(expression1,expression2,expression3*) as the
>example...
>The SAXON documentation shows concat(expression1{,expression2}*)...
>
>I can't get either to work.
Both of those syntactic expressions are somewhat misleading. The XPath one
means that concat() takes multiple expressions, separated by commas. The
asterisk indicates that there should be two, and that the third one is not
only optional but also repeatable (i.e., that there may be more than three
arguments).
The SAXON documentation correctly observes that concat() can take one
expression. The curly braces encapsulate both the comma and the second
expression, and indicate that the encapsulation may be repeated.
Both are saying that concat() takes multiple arguments separated by commas.
The main problem you're having is with the nature of an expression. The
variable part ($sect1num) is correct, since a variable reference is a valid
expression. But the .htm for instance is wrong. A literal string
expression must be surrounded by quotes: '.htm'. It's not clear whether
sect1 is an XPath or a string. If it were a string, you'd want
concat('sect1', $sect1num, '.htm')
If sect1 is a path intended to get the value of the sect1 child of the
current node, then you would do
concat(sect1, $sect1num, '.htm')
HTH,
Chris
--
Christopher R. Maden, Senior XML Analyst, Lexica LLC
222 Kearny St., Ste. 202, San Francisco, CA 94108-4510
+1.415.901.3631 tel./+1.415.477.3619 fax
<URL:http://www.lexica.net/> <URL:http://www.oreilly.com/%7Ecrism/>
XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list