[XSL-LIST Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date]

Re: [xsl] Keys with duplicates should be simple

---

---

or you can just not use it.

Thank you Wendell.

On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 8:41 PM, Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Ihe,
>
>>> http://www.biglist.com/lists/lists.mulberrytech.com/xsl-list/archives/201211/msg00170.html
>
> Indeed. You are not the only one to find 'except' to be contrary to
> what you expect, in view of its natural-language usage in English.
> (D*mned prepositions.)
>
> When reading XPath, my brain more or less automatically assumes
> everything is a relative path from the context node (that is, it
> traverses the tree relatively until an absolute path is given), so I
> mentally translate ($a except $b) as "my $a except my $b". So "my $a
> except my 'blah' element children" ($a except blah) doesn't freak me
> out.
>
> In English, "breakfast except donuts" should indicate (as you remind
> us in that thread) "breakfast except (its) donuts", while I read it as
> "(my) breakfast except (my) donuts". Or XPath "$breakfast except
> child::donut". (It turns out that being mentally able to translate
> abbreviated XPath into long XPath is also a useful skill.)
>
> Or, you can take "except" in its sense not as a preposition but a
> transitive verb, such as "he excepted himself on the grounds that he
> had already said too much".
>
> Cheers, Wendell
>
> --
> Wendell Piez | http://www.wendellpiez.com
> XML | XSLT | electronic publishing
> Eat Your Vegetables
> _____oo_________o_o___ooooo____ooooooo_^

---