Trying to decide between XPath and one-level-at-a-time found an ideal3rd. way

[Cambridge Ray]

(newbie alert)

I found two (DOM) tutorial-type programs to retrieve values and I am
trying to decide which one I will build upon.

(For this explanation, I will use the filesystem analogy.)

One of them is simpler, being based on XPath:

cat /some/dir/inside/another/item.txt

The other program goes like this:

cd some
cd dir
cd inside
cd another
cat item.txt

(the above are actually nested loops)

I now realize that the two approaches would be even more useful, if
combined into a hybrid approach:

cd /some/dir/inside/another
dir
cat item.txt
cat other.txt

Is there such express way to jump directly to the desired depth where
your target item resides?

TIA,

-RFH

 

[Cambridge Ray]

(newbie alert)

I found two (DOM) tutorial-type programs to retrieve values and I am
trying to decide which one I will build upon.

(For this explanation, I will use the filesystem analogy.)

One of them is simpler, being based on XPath:

cat /some/dir/inside/another/item.txt

The other program goes like this:

cd some
cd dir
cd inside
cd another
cat item.txt

(the above are actually nested loops)

I now realize that the two approaches would be even more useful, if
combined into a hybrid approach:

cd /some/dir/inside/another
dir
cat item.txt
cat other.txt

Is there such express way to jump directly to the desired depth where
your target item resides?

TIA,

-RFH

As long as I using a filesystem analogy, what I am looking for would
be like this Unix command:

mkdir -p some/dir/inside/another

Which creates all unexistent directories.

-RFH

 

[Cambridge Ray]

(newbie alert)

I found two (DOM) tutorial-type programs to retrieve values and I am
trying to decide which one I will build upon.

(For this explanation, I will use the filesystem analogy.)

One of them is simpler, being based on XPath:

cat /some/dir/inside/another/item.txt

The other program goes like this:

cd some
cd dir
cd inside
cd another
cat item.txt

(the above are actually nested loops)

I now realize that the two approaches would be even more useful, if
combined into a hybrid approach:

cd /some/dir/inside/another
dir
cat item.txt
cat other.txt

Is there such express way to jump directly to the desired depth where
your target item resides?

TIA,

-RFH

I forgot to mention that I use Xerces-C++, which is very powerful, but
has a steep learning curve.

-RFH

 

[Joe Kesselman]

As long as I using a filesystem analogy, what I am looking for would
be like this Unix command:

mkdir -p some/dir/inside/another

Which creates all unexistent directories.

That's an underspecified behavior, since you haven't said WHERE it
should create them if other children are already present. (Remember, the
order may be meaningful in some documents, and/or may be constrained by
the DTD or Schema.)

I think the application code needs to be a bit more thoughtful about this.


--
Joe Kesselman,
http://www.love-song-productions.com/people/keshlam/index.html

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