[xquery-talk] Whitespace problem in CSV-like output

[Yves Forkl]

John Snelson wrote:

> Well, DataDirect's method seems to require you to construct a custom XML 
> structure, and specify a implementation specific serialization method. 
> Your current method requires that you create some strings, and join them 
> with string-join(). I'm not sure there's a lot of difference between the 
> two.

You are right that both approaches don't have what I was looking for: A 
pre-cooked solution for writing CSV rows and cells. But that's OK, now I 
have what I need and at the same time I have learned some useful things.


> I agree that using a space as a separator between atomic items when 
> outputting them can be confusing - but at other times it's actually very 
> useful. It's now a widespread practice in both XQuery and XSLT 2.0, so I 
> don't know how much it could be changed.

That's completely true. I'm familiar (and happy) with the space 
insertion rules of XSLT 2.0 (if I may use this non-technical term here), 
but still have to wrap my head around the way XQuery serializes the 
results of multiple iterations.


> It would seem to be a bug if it drops the last line feed in the output.

Unfortunately not: Of course, string-join's separator character (here: 
line feed) is by definition not to be appended after the last item. 
That's why changing the functions doesn't work out.

   Yves