RE: creation order vs. document order

> But now I'm still left with the following question. Is the 
> semantics of 
> the following expression well defined in the formal semantics?
> 
>     (<x><y id="1"/><y id="2"/></x>)/y

I don't know about the formal semantics, but will refer you again to
section 3.2 of the data model:

"The relative order of siblings is determined by their order in the XML
representation. A node N1 occurs before a node N2 in document order if
and only if the start of N1 occurs before the start of N2 in the XML
document."

And also:

"Informally, document order is the order returned by an in-order,
depth-first, left-to-right traversal of the data model."

So the document order of the y elements (that is: the copies that are
children of the x element, not the originally created ones) is well
defined.

Bas de Bakker
X-Hive Corporation

Received on Wednesday, 24 September 2003 06:00:45 UTC