Re: [xsl] Confused about "/.." pattern

[Jeni Tennison <jeni at jenitennison 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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