RE: [xml-dev] Beware of XPath expressions that produce falsepositives

["Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>]

Hi Folks,

I wrote an XSLT program that evaluates a series of B elements, to see which are empty. The XSLT program tests each B element using this XPath expression:   not(node()) and not(@*)

Here are the results:

	Is empty?
<B/>	true
<B></B>	true
<B>&null;</B>	true
<B>  </B>	false
<B><!-- Hello, world --></B>	false
<B><bad/></B>	false
<B>99</B>	false
<B x="10"/>	false

 

The XPath seems to be returning results that are consistent with my definition of “empty element.”

/Roger