On Mon, 23 Aug 2004 11:29:27 +0100, David Carlisle
<davidc(_at_)nag(_dot_)co(_dot_)uk> wrote:
Could you be so kind and translate the predicates into plain english
to help my understanding - I'm especially keen on knowing to which
node "self" maps and in which order the predicates are mapped to the
node sets?
self:: is an axis that just contains the current node
so self::br matches the current node if it's a br and matches nothing
otherwise. so when used as a predicate it's the same as
name(.)='br'
except it's probably a bit more efficient and more importantly it's
"namespace safe", if you are using namespaces you can never be 100%
certain what string name() is going to return as a processor may think
up arbitrary prefixes on the fly so you may be expecting
name(.)='br' but actually teh processor returns a name(0 of _xx_654:br
(this can't happen for the no-namespace case as such elements can never
have a prefix)
David,
When would such a condition occur? Wouldnt the association of
namespace prefix to urn for any namespaces being used have to occur in
the stylesheet for the XML to be processed correctly? Why would the
the processor have to think up prefixes on the fly?
Thanks,
Kenneth