Hi,
At 05:56 AM 8/31/2007, David replied to Andrew:
> I think there might be a rule here of "code the obvious"
yes actually I need the construct quite often in the day job and what
we seem to have mostly is
foo[2] and not(foo[3])
which I think is reasonably clear and likely to be as efficient as
anything.
I agree this is preferable if only for reasons of clarity, and am
glad to hear no one complain that it is unacceptably inefficient. :->
In XSLT 2.0 I'm starting to use exists(foo[2]) just since in my
experience so many beginners just stumble over the nodeset-as-boolean
test for existence. (And so many maintenance programmers are
beginners! Tell me why that is.) So I might just excuse myself for
"exists(foo[2]) and not(foo[3])", even though a beginner would
probably guess what it does correctly and be wrong about why.
Of Abel's menagerie of equivalents -- all I can say is to agree with
how remarkable the range of alternatives is. (As for the brain-teaser
-- when would it ever select anything?)
Cheers,
Wendell
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Wendell Piez
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Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com
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