hi group,



I have made a test style sheet to examine how I can use a string value 
to create nested elements (xslt2, saxon9).

The string contains one or more style descriptors; the needed elements 
have a different name than the corresponding styles.



My strategy is to convert the string to a sequence of relevant 
substrings and then to map the sequence to the right element name.



Below I have pasted my stylesheet. For the input document



<root/>



it creates the expected output



<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<document>
   <BLD>
      <ITA/>
   </BLD>
</document>

My question is: this solution looks clumsy. How can I improve it? My 
focus is not on the nest-template itself, but on the 
get_attributes-template and the calling of the nest-template (is the 
extra blop variable needed?)...



thanks in advance, Ruud




<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!-- maak een stack van strings -->

<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" 
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"

                        xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"

                        exclude-result-prefixes="xs">



  <xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" indent="yes"/>



  <xsl:template match="/root">
    <xsl:variable name='blop' as='xs:string*'>
      <xsl:call-template name='get_attributes'>
        <!-- make sequence of strings -->
        <xsl:with-param name='string'
                        select='"style: italic;bold"'/>
      </xsl:call-template>
    </xsl:variable>

    <document>
      <xsl:call-template name='nest'>
        <xsl:with-param name='lijst' select='$blop'/>
      </xsl:call-template>
    </document>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template name='nest'>
    <xsl:param name='lijst' select='zip'/>
    <xsl:choose>
      <xsl:when test="empty($lijst)">
        <!-- end recursion -->
        <xsl:sequence select="()"/>
      </xsl:when>
      <xsl:otherwise>
        <xsl:element name="{$lijst[1]}">
          <xsl:call-template name='nest'>
            <xsl:with-param name='lijst' select='$lijst[position() != 1]'/>
          </xsl:call-template>
        </xsl:element>
      </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template name='get_attributes'>
    <xsl:param name='string' select='zip'/>
      <xsl:variable name='blip'
                    as='xs:string*'
                    select="for $h in ('bold', 'italic') return
                          if (contains($string, $h)) then $h else ()"/>
      <xsl:sequence select="for $h in $blip return if ($h = 'bold') then
                                                        'BLD' else
                              if ($h = 'italic') then 'ITA' else ()" />
  </xsl:template>