XPath 1.0 Datatypes
XPath 1.0 and XSLT 1.0 define five datatypes, described in
the list that follows. The result tree
fragment
type is defined by XSLT 1.0 and is specific to
transformations; the other four are defined by XPath and are generic to
any technology that uses XPath. The four XPath datatypes are tersely
defined in section 1 of the XPath specification; section 11.1 of the
XSLT specification defines result tree fragments.
node-set
A set of nodes. The set can be empty or it can contain any number of nodes.
[2.0] In XSLT 2.0, the
node-set
has been replaced by the sequence.boolean
The value
true
orfalse
. Be aware that the stringstrue
andfalse
have no special meaning or value in XPath. If you need to use the boolean values themselves, use the functionstrue()
andfalse()
.number
A floating-point number. All numbers in XPath and XSLT 1.0 are implemented as floating-point numbers; the
integer
orint
datatype does not exist in XPath and XSLT 1.0. To be specific, all numbers are implemented as IEEE 754 floating-point numbers, the same standard used by the Javafloat
anddouble
primitive types. In addition to ordinary numbers, there are five special values for numbers: positive and negative infinity, positive and negative zero, andNaN
, the special symbol for anything that is not a number.string
Zero or more characters, as defined in the XML specification.
result tree fragment
A temporary tree. You can create one with an
<xsl:variable>
element that uses content (instead of theselect
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