I know this is a back door way to ask what is possibly an xslt question,
but it sort of relates here as well.
The XPATH standards says a number is:
[30] Number ::= Digits <http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath#NT-Digits> ('.'
Digits <http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath#NT-Digits>?)? | '.' Digits
<http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath#NT-Digits>
[31] Digits ::= [0-9]+
That of course means a Number can start with a '0'.
Now by convention a number starting with 0 is often interpreted as octal
and it seems that libxml from xml.com indeed makes that assumption -
trying to interpret 00000000000000999900 as an octal (and therefore
invalid) number. But this definition of a number doesn't allow for the
0x convention of a hexadecimal number...
The standard also mentions that you shouldn't try to interpret an
element as a number unless it is a number in the natural language it
comes from. Which means the above is open to all sorts of
interpretations - it's natural to a computer, but not a person etc
I'd like to be able to say to our business partners that this is not the
right way to express a number (in fact they want 99.99 - which is
another problem and brings the expr function into play) and they should
drop the leading zeroes.
But I can't do that without the backing of the standards.
Comments? Help?
Thanks
Rick
Michael Kay wrote:
>> It is common practice for programmers to name variables in
>> numerous non-helpful ways, it is best practice to have a well
>> thought out naming scheme that allows those who maintain code
>> to know what a variable is to be used for, hopefully
>> achievable by following the coding styles for their languages
>> and organizations
>>
>
> My experience is that an intelligent programmer using their own common sense
> will usually produce much more helpful variable names than a programmer who
> is blindly following rules defined by some corporate style police.
>
> Michael Kay
> http://www.saxonica.com/
>
>
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