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Re: [xsl] XPath Expressions: Separate predicates or one predicate with AND?

2017-02-21 18:10:31
But it occurs to me that in this case the expressions are functionally 
identical: the set of predicates is effectively an AND group.

Is there any reason to prefer one form expression over the other?

No, but the ordering of the sub-expressions (assuming the processor
does shortcuts) can be really important. That is, place first the
sub-expression that most-often would make the whole expression false()
(in case of "and"-ing) or true() (in case of "or"-ing).

I believe that shortcutting isn't specified as mandatory in the XPath
specifications, but I might be wrong. Certainly, any serious optimizer
will do shortcutting.


Cheers,
Dimitre

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 2:07 PM, Eliot Kimber ekimber(_at_)contrext(_dot_)com
<xsl-list-service(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com> wrote:
I’m updating code that has expressions like:

<xsl:when test=”*[@a = ‘1’ and @b = ‘2’ and @c = ‘3’]”>

My normal practice would be to use separate predicates:

<xsl:when test=”*[@a = ‘1’][@b = ‘2’][@c = ‘3’]”>

But it occurs to me that in this case the expressions are functionally 
identical: the set of predicates is effectively an AND group.

Is there any reason to prefer one form expression over the other?

I can imagine that different XSLT processors might apply different 
optimization strategies to the two forms, although as we’ve discussed many 
times, that’s not something you can worry about for general usage.

Cheers,

Eliot



--
Eliot Kimber
http://contrext.com






-- 
Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev
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