XOM API for Processing XML with Java

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

Wolfgang Hoschek wrote:

> Well, it would be helpful if you could state why this is "clearly correct".

The XPath data model does not allow adjacent text nodes. According to 
the spec,

"As much character data as possible is grouped into each text node: a 
text node never has an immediately following or preceding sibling that 
is a text node."

Getting this right is critical for making sure that positional 
predicates do what you expect, and not introducing off-by-one-or-more 
errors. There are other issues as well, but positional predicates are 
the ones that are going to come up most frequently.

Hmm, looking at the spec I see one other tricky bit we have to watch out 
for:

"A text node always has at least one character of data."

In other words, empty Text objects cannot be selected. That's going to 
be tricky to implement. Time to write a test case.


> I'll add the following method to the next Nux release candidate, unless 
> a convincing argument can be made that one can easily do without it:

I suspect this method might be useful in and of itself, irrespective of 
 XPath issues. I'd say go ahead and add it.

--
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo AT metalab.unc.edu
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
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