& XSLT Here's a follow-up to my question from yesterday about parsing footnotes 
with XML::LibXML.

This time, I'm parsing verse lines, so it's a different situation, but 
the replies to yesterday's query helped me to build a string out of the 
text nodes in a mixed-content node that is part of a larger structure.

I'm recursively parsing from a higher level all the way down, always 
passing a node to a subroutine. If it is a text node, the subroutine 
appends its data content to a scalar and ends; if the node has children, 
the subroutine is called again.

This is the code (minus a few attributes):

<lg> <note><span><l>
<seg n="a"> ......</seg>
<seg n="b"> ......</seg></l><l>
<seg n="c"> ......</seg>
<seg n="d"> ......</seg>
</l> </span><app>
...
...
</app> </note></lg>

The text nodes are inside the <seg> -elements, which may also contain 
further <note> -elements, and whatnot.

The <l> -elements are verse lines, and their data content needs to be 
isolated.
This is done in two different ways: for the <l> -element containing 
<seg> s "a" and "b", the trigger is the beginning of <seg> "c". The 
scalar content is then copied and emptied out.

For the <l> -element containing <seg>s "c" and "d", the routine checks if 
the last <seg>  parsed was "d", if  the node in question is a text node 
and has no next sibling. This means it's the last text node in the last 
segment of the verse, and thus the second verse line is complete.

This last check runs into problems, however, when there is additional 
whitespace before the closing </lg> -tag:

<lg> <note><span><l>
<seg n="a"> ......</seg>
<seg n="b"> ......</seg></l><l>
<seg n="c"> ......</seg>
<seg n="d"> ......</seg>
</l> </span><app>
...
...
</app> </note>
</lg> 

The newline after the closing </note>  tag results in a text node with 
whitespace as its content. When the script arrives at that node, it 
logically determines that this is the final text node, has no siblings, 
and that the last <seg>  parsed was "d".

I can get around this problem by testing, in addition to checking on the 
"n"-attribute of the last parsed <seg>  and the absence of a next 
sibling, whether the text node is actually inside <seg>  
($el-> findnodes('ancestor::seg') - need not necessarily be a parent).

But still, I'm intrigued that this actually happens, and was wondering 
whether there is any way to make XML::LibXML ignore this whitespace.



Birgit










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