RE: [xslt2 func/op] tokenizing "abba" to ("a","b","b","a")

> 
> The sentence 
> > If the supplied $pattern matches a zero length string...
> 
> should anyway (as this thread shows) be clarified, but as it 
> stands I think the natural interpretation of "matches" here 
> is the interprestation of matches used in replace(), and in 
> this case that is a greedy match as .? is greedy, so since it 
> is the entire regexp it is equivalent to . and will match 
> each character. While .? _could_ match an empty string, it 
> doesn't here so the empty string should not be used as separator.

That's a good point. The intended meaning of the sentence was

if (fn:matches("", $pattern))

but you are right to point out that a different interpretation is possible.

Michael Kay