Article:		XSLT 2 and Delimited Lists
Subject:		Wondering whether brackets are needed to have a sequence
Date:		2003-05-20 10:31:11
From:		Martin Honnen
For the XML input <colors> <color>red</color> <color>green</color> <color>blue</color> <color>yellow</color> </colors> the author claims that the XPath (color) is needed to have the sequence of <color> elements but I think that the brackets are not needed, it would suffice to use <xsl:template match="colors"> {<xsl:value-of select="item-at(color,3)"/>} {<xsl:value-of select="index-of(color,'green')"/>} </xsl:template> to apply the function item-at respectively index-of to the sequence of <color> elements.

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• Wondering whether brackets are needed to have a sequence
  2003-05-20 18:06:17 Bob DuCharme [Reply]
  
  To identify a sequence, I was following the model at http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath20/#id-sequence-expressions, which shows that parentheses are required. I never tried it without them.

  
  Bob
  
  

  • Wondering whether brackets are needed to have a sequence
    2003-05-21 02:44:46 Martin Honnen [Reply]
    
    But the section you refer to is about constructing sequences from atomar values, there you need () to construct a sequence. Your example however uses an XPath expression with an element name as a node test and in XPath 1.0 that results in a node set why it is my understanding that in XPath 2.0 it results in a sequence of nodes.
    Indeed if I try the example with Saxon 7.5 without the () around color then the result is the same as with (color).