Re: [Xmlstar-devel] enhanced_select branch

[André K. <ak...@la...>]

Hi Noam,

>> I've put an "enhanced" xml select version in the 'enhanced_select'
>> branch.
>>
>> The most useful switches to me currently are --var, --key and --
>> choose/--when/--otherwise. But --import might be useful also.
>> The --function/--param/--call-template/--with-param needs some
>> thinking since it's too verbose to my taste.
>>
>> I use variables mostly for clarity, and since they can hold nodesets,
>> it makes it easier to collect data from several places in an xml
>> document (or even several times from the same place).
>
> Is it worth adding all these options? Your example shell commands look
> like XSL with shorter tags (<tagname></tagname> becomes --tagname or
> -t).

Well that's what I wanted to discuss about!
I think some switches are definitely worth adding: var, key, choose/ 
when/otherwise, import, include.
Some are less worth it and as you say could be added with extra  
switches or extended --elem and --attr (say --xelem and --xattr) which  
would write xslt elements.

Some switches could be shortcuts to longer xslt constructs (like  
currently --template, --match): function and/or function call switches.

In the end the command line will look like an XSLT stylesheet but less  
verbose and hopefully human-readable.
But I also see xmlstarlet as a command-line xslt stylesheet designer.

>>
>> Here's a little script which dumps the structure of an XML document
>> and demonsrates the use of --var and --choose/--when/--otherwise
>> switches.
>
> I couldn't get this one to work. I got a whole bunch of warnings like:
>
> warning: failed to load external entity "b"
> warning: failed to load external entity "--when"

I think that my mail client breaks lines longer than 70 characters.
I added the contrib/xml_struct.sh script in the enhanced_select branch.
Hopefully you'll be able to use it.

Regards,
André