Re: [xsl] two regexp related questions

[Michael Kay <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 19/05/2011 18:45, Julian Reschke wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I've got two regexp-related questions.
>
> 1) Is it correct that XSLT/XPath2's regular expressions do not support 
> non-capturing groups (as shown in 
> <http://www.exampledepot.com/egs/java.util.regex/NoGroup.html>)?

Yes. This is being added in 3.0.
> 2) With respect to analyze-string, and the captured regex-groups:
>
> I'm using a regex like
>
>   ([A-Z]+) = ([A-Z]+) ( ; ([A-Z]+) = ([A-Z]+) )*
>
> for matching things like
>
>   a=b;c=d;e=f

Why not use the regex

([A-Z]+) = ([A-Z]+)

and rely on xsl:matching-substring being called multiple times?

Alternatively, first use tokenize() to split on the semicolons, and then 
put each token through xsl:analyze-string.

Personally, I find long regexes very difficult to get right, and try to 
split the task up into small pieces that I can understand and debug.

Michael Kay
Saxonica