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Re: Confused about "/.." pattern
- From: Jeni Tennison <jeni at jenitennison dot com>
- To: "paul morgan" <pmorg at lycos dot com>
- Cc: xsl-list at lists dot mulberrytech dot com
- Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 16:38:50 +0100
- Subject: Re: [xsl] Confused about "/.." pattern
- Organization: Jeni Tennison Consulting Ltd
- References: <CJOMCEDKBBOOGAAA@mailcity.com>
- Reply-to: xsl-list at lists dot mulberrytech dot com
Hi Paul,
> I'm a little confused about the interpretation of the pattern, "/.."
> My feeble knowledge of XSLT would parse this as the parent of the
> root, but that doesn't make any sense to me. Any help on what I'm
> missing would be appreciated.
That's absolutely right. As you know, the root doesn't have a parent,
therefore the path /.. is a good way of getting an empty node set.
People use it as the default value for parameters that should be
passed node sets so that they can guarantee that if a value *isn't*
passed for that parameter, the stylesheet won't crash when you try to
use the nodes held in the parameter as the start of a path.
Cheers,
Jeni
---
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com/
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