XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[Elliotte Harold <elharo AT metalab.unc.edu>]

Wolfgang Hoschek wrote:

> Small suggestion: In XPath, the string value of a node sequence is well 
> defined. So it might make sense to add a corresponding method "public 
> String getValue()" to Nodes. That way, one could nicely use it over the 
> result of an XPath or XQuery. Not really important, but it would be nice 
> and consistent with other objects having an XPath getValue method.

node sequence: sounds like you're thinking XPath 2. Remember I'm 
thinking XPath 1. In XPath 1 the value of a node set is simply the value 
of the first node in the set (in document order). Since a XOM Nodes 
object can contain nodes from multiple documents, and nodes out of 
order, this is really tricky and probably not very useful.

What's the XPath 2 notion of string value of a node sequence? Just the 
string concatenation of the values of each node in the sequence? If this 
seems useful in its own right, I'd consider adding it. But I might want 
a use-case first. I don't know. XPath might provide that use case. Make 
the query, get the value?

--
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo AT metalab.unc.edu
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