In 2.0 you can escape the string delimiter by doubling it: ' as '', or " as
"". And of course you can escape the attribute delimiter using an XML entity
reference.
<xsl:if test="$x = 'He said, "I can''t"'">
In 1.0 you can't have a string literal containing both single and double
quotes. Use concat:
<xsl:variable name="quot">"</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="apos">'</xsl:variable>
<xsl:if test="$x = concat('He said, ', $quot, 'I can', $apos, 't', $quot)">
Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Ludwig [mailto:mlu(_at_)as-guides(_dot_)com]
Sent: 28 November 2008 11:43
To: xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
Subject: [xsl] String containing both single and double
quotes (apos and quot) in XPath expression
I want to hold a string containing both single and double
quotes (apos and quot) in a variable.
<xsl:variable name="x" select="'...'"/>
I enclose the XPath expression in double quotes, hence I'll
have to use entity references or numerical character
references to refer to that character from within the
expression. Correct.
I enclose the string in single quotes, hence - I think - I'll
have to use entity references or numerical character
references to refer to that character from with the string.
And this is wrong.
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";>
<xsl:output method="text"/>
<!-- quot ist 34 (x22), apos ist 39 (x27) -->
<xsl:variable name="x"
select="'"O'Reilly"'"/><!-- wrong -->
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:value-of select="$x"/>
<xsl:text> </xsl:text>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Trying to think about it a bit more logically, I find that
XPath does not require any of < > & to be treated specially,
and that both entity references and numerical character
references don't have anything to do with XPath - they're XML
constructs.
So in this example, the XML parser resolves the references
and the XPath engine never gets to see them. Instead, it gets
to see a syntax error.
Is this analysis correct?
It seems there is no way to include a single quote within a
string that is itself contained in single quotes. Conversely,
the same applies for double quotes. This is a bit hard to
believe. Is it true?
I wish I could use a backslash! Have I missed anything?
I see two solutions in XSLT 1.0:
* I can write the xsl:variable as an RTF, which offers much better
readability.
* I can split the string according to whether single or double quotes
occur in it and use the XPath 1.0 concat() function to
make it whole
again.
Do I have more options?
In 2.0, instead of an RTF, I'd have a temporary tree. What
else has changed that is of immediate interest to the problem at hand?
Thanks.
Michael Ludwig
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