Re: [Xmldb-org-xupdate] Poorly defined update instruction

[Wolfgang M. <wol...@ex...>]

> 3) It would be useful for update to allow element, attribute, etc. as 
> content. That said, I'm not convinced it's worth the complexity, as you 
> can simply delete the element and reinsert it with the new content.

I would like to propose a "replace" instruction for this purpose. Maybe 
I'm wrong, but to replace an element by first deleting and then 
reinserting it, you need to keep track of the element's position. This 
is certainly possible (using a variable, for example), but a distinct 
"replace" expression would make it easier and leaves it to the XUpdate 
implementation to remember the previous position. Example:

<xupdate:replace select="/example/p[2]">
   <quote>a <b>replaced</b> paragraph</quote>
</xupdate:replace>

Concerning "update", I would still allow element, text etc. as content 
if the "select" xpath evaluates to one or more elements. Otherwise, the 
expression just updates the value of an attribute or text node.

Wolfgang