RE: String literal syntax in XPath2.0

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pfeiffer, Bernhard - Munich [mailto:bpfeiffer@munichre.com]
> Sent: 25 February 2002 09:21
> To: www-xpath-comments@w3.org
> Subject: String literal syntax in XPath2.0
> 
> 
> Dear XPath people,
> working with Xpath I found a syntactical problem:
> 
> [141]   	 StringLiteral	    ::=   	 (["] [^"]* ["]) |  ([']
> [^']* ['])	
> http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath20/#id-literals
> 
> What to do with a string which contains both characters " and ' ????

This problem actually exists at XPath 1.0, and in an XSLT environment it is
usually solved by using concat() with variables. But we have resolved to
extend the syntax for string literals to allow the delimiting quotes to be
doubled as in SQL, so you will be able to write 'He said, "I didn''t"'. 

> 
> By the way, dynamic XPath expressions would be very nice:
> http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt20/#dynamic-evaluation!!!
> 
They would indeed. The current position, however, is that the XSL WG has
decided not to include this feature in XSLT 2.0. The main reason is that it
is not possible to implement it under certain architectures, especially when
a stylesheet is compiled and executed in an environment where no XPath
interpreter is available.

Mike Kay

Received on Monday, 25 February 2002 11:29:32 UTC