On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 01:35:54AM +0100, Ihe Onwuka scripsit:
On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 12:02 AM, Graydon <graydon(_at_)marost(_dot_)ca>
wrote:
<xsl:template match="node()">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="node()"/>
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
does that; it's not recursive, it's a single template. It'll get
applied to all the nodes, but that's the magic of the XSLT declarative
if it were only about whether cognoscenti can think up an elegant
solution - we'd still all be doing Muenchian Grouping.
To know about Muenchian Grouping, which is not, alas, elegant, merely
effective, and not know about the identity template seem really odd.
I would also note that understanding the xsl:for-each-group instruction
is in no way obviously easier than understanding Muenchian Grouping!
More capable, more readily applied, I think more powerful even in the
fully formal sense, yes, but it's not an easy instruction to understand.
Identity template processing is surely basic; one of the four basic
patterns for an XSLT program, and I'd argue the _most_ basic of those
four.
Really not wanting to deal with the declarative model, well, yes. That
is certainly widely observed. But XSLT _is_ the declarative model.
I've not been paying attention to 3.0 but I'd be looking at copy-of
and thinking it is ripe for accepting an anonymous function/template
that is applied as it traverses it's hierarchy. which would be another
way of addressing the issue.
Which would be a horrible mistake; copy-of is useful in significant part
because it is a way to say "the whole subtree, you don't have to think
about it" to the optimizer.
Thinking of XSLT programming as a conversation with the optimizer isn't
entirely basic, but it's a good habit all the same.
--
Graydon Saunders
graydon(_at_)marost(_dot_)ca
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