[xsl] RE: ordering and iteration problem

[Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev at yahoo dot com>]

> > I was just wondering why this "design
> > pattern" was typically described using "document('')//node()" when
> > "//node()" seemed to be more correct.
> 
> Because in a typical scenario, the stylesheet author knows how many nodes
> there are in the stylesheet, but has no idea how many there will be in the
> source document.
> 
> Mike Kay
> Software AG

It is also worth noting that a huge number of additional nodes can be easily added to the
stylesheet. An example can be found at 
http://www.vbxml.com/snippetcentral/main.asp?view=viewsnippet&lang=xsl&id=v20010324001431

In case the stylesheet is like this:
<xsl:stylesheet version='1.0'
     xmlns:xsl='http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform'
     xmlns:Shakespeare="Shakespeare">

  <Shakespeare:Hamlet>
    <!-- Hamlet goes here -->
  </Shakespeare:Hamlet>

  <!-- the rest of the stylesheet -->
</xsl:stylesheet>

where the included text is the xml version of "Hamlet" from Jon Bosak's site
http://www.stoa.org/bard/

In this case if the st variable holds the stylesheet:

<xsl:variable name="st" select="document('')"/>

then the following expression:
  count($st//node() | $st//@* | $st//namespace::*)
evaluates to 32032

While such a technique is definitely ugly it is still the only means to prevent imperfect XSLT
processors from crashing under deep recursive processing.

Dimitre Novatchev.

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