Re: [xsl] Testing for presence of node

[Wendell Piez <wapiez at mulberrytech dot com>]

Dhruv,

At 04:45 AM 6/22/2002, you wrote:

> All points are valid, except :
>
> > 4. The guy wants to know if the subcategory element exists, not if it
> > has non-empty text content.
>
> *[name()='subcategory'] gives the child-node 'subcategory', not the content.
Yes but string-length(*[name()='subcategory']) returns the length of the 
string value of the (first) node in its argument node-set. That's its 
content. If the subcategory node existed but had no value, as in 
<subcategory/>, then its string-length would be 0 and your test would fail.

One reason to prefer simpler code is that it's less likely to break and 
return something not what you meant at all.

Cheers,
Wendell


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