[xquery-talk] Elegant form of testing for () and ''

[David Lee]

I run into this problem frequently and it tends to bite me in production
months later, not in unit testing.

Suppose I have a string which rarely can be () but more often ''

 

I've used this test

 

declare function local:getname( $e ) as xs:string

{

       let $name := $e/name/string()

    return 

if( $name ne '' ) then $name else "<untitled>"

}

 

But a few months later it ends up in 1 case being () and this function
crashes because () cant be coerced to xs:string

DUH

 

So I augment it to 

 

if( exists($name) and $name ne '' ) then $name else "<untitled>"

 

 

But this pattern seems so common, is there a more elegant or concise way of
testing for both () and '' ?

( I have the same problem with NUL values in SQL world , and null values in
java ... but thats another problem ... xquery is (N+1)G so it should be
easier right ?

 

 

 

 

----------------------------------------

David A. Lee

 <mailto:dlee at calldei.com> dlee at calldei.com

 <http://www.xmlsh.org> http://www.xmlsh.org

 

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