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At 2:06 AM -0800 3/25/02, Dare Obasanjo wrote:
>I am actually curious as to how you've convinced people that the
>fact that XSLT doesn't have variables [or semi-decent text
>manipulation facilities] and it takes one a two page stylesheet to
>simulate a for loop will give them as you put it " gain [that] is
>worth the pain" ?
>
That's a bit of an exaggeration. For instance, consider this CS101 for loop:
for (int i=1; i < 10; i++) {
System.out.println(i);
}
Here's the same loop in XSLT:
<xsl:template name="CS101">
<xsl:param name="index" select="1"/>
<xsl:if test="index <= 10">
<xsl:value-of select="$index"/>
<xsl:call-template name="CS101">
<xsl:param name="index" select="$index + 1"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:template>
It's a little more complicated, but most of that is a result of the
XML syntax, not recursion or the lack of modifiable variables. And
it's certainly not two pages more complicated.
If we were to rewrite the functional solution in Java for a more
accurate comparison of functional vs. imperative approaches you'd
have something like this:
public void loop(int i) {
System.out.println(i);
if (i < 10) loop(i+1);
}
That may be less familiar but it's hardly more fundamentally complex.
--
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| The XML Bible, 2nd Edition (Hungry Minds, 2001) |
| http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/bible2/ |
| http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0764547607/cafeaulaitA/ |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
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