[topicmapmail] xpath: stop at first match

[G. Ken Holman]

At 2006-08-01 21:05 -0400, Carlo Moneti wrote:
>A "stop on first match" option in xpath strikes 
>me as a highly useful feature. And, in my case, 
>my code would be tighter and more consistent. 
>I'm sorry to get confirmation that it doesn't exist.

In my opinion, W3C and ISO standards properly 
specify results, not behaviours.  Products 
compete on the implementation of their own 
behaviours to produce the specified results.

Two people, myself included, have told you that 
the following specifies what you want:

   /topicMap/topic[@id='$id'][1]

It would be inappropriate for a standard to 
dictate *how* that is implemented.  In the XSLT 
world the Saxon processor returns the first 
without looking beyond, while I believe (though 
I'm not positive) the XT processor obtains all 
and then returns the first of them.

If the implementation of XPath you are using is 
not lazily implemented, then change it or obtain 
another that is lazily implemented ... in my 
opinion the specification is not to blame or to be "fixed".

. . . . . . . . . . . . . Ken

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