[xquery-talk] deep-equal?

[Michael Kay]

The XML specification doesn't define such a thing as insignificant
whitespace, because there are many contexts in which whitespace is indeed
significant. deep-equal() follows this precedent. If you don't want
whitespace taken into account, get rid of it before calling deep-equal.

In practice the spec of deep-equal() is full of compromises, there are many
specific requirements that it won't meet. You can always write your own
function. Saxon has an option saxon:deep-equal() with a third parameter
containing option flags that can be used to customize its behaviour
(including a flag that causes diagnostic messages to be output saying WHY
the two trees were deemed unequal).

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/


> -----Original Message-----
> From: talk-bounces at x-query.com 
> [mailto:talk-bounces at x-query.com] On Behalf Of Florian Wendland
> Sent: 17 October 2007 10:02
> To: XQuery Talk
> Subject: [xquery-talk] deep-equal?
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> i have a question concerning the euality of sequences. 
> Therefore i have prepared two documents, which seemed to be 
> identically.
> 
> --------------------------------------------------
> First:
> 
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
> <webcritics>
> 	<book id="1">Dunkeltann</book>
> 	
> </webcritics>
> 
> Second:
> 
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
> <webcritics>
> 	<book id="1">Dunkeltann</book>
> </webcritics>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> 
> The first document contains a linebreak in the 
> document-element. The deep-equal function returns false, 
> although the documents are obviously the same (whitespaces 
> should not be included in the compare mechanism, i think).
> 
> Is this behaviour of the deep-equal function coorect?
> 
> Thx
> 
> mfw
> 
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