Name
[2.0] compare()
Compares two xs:strings and returns -1, 0, or 1, depending on whether the first string
is less than, equal to, or greater than the second.
Syntax
xs:integer?compare(xs:string?,xs:string?)xs:integer?compare(xs:string?,xs:string?,$collation as xs:string)
Inputs
Two xs:strings and an
optional collation.
Output
The numeric value -1,
0, or 1, depending on whether the first string
is less than, equal to, or greater than the second. The optional
$collation argument names a
collation used for comparing the two strings. To quote an example
from the XSLT 2.0 spec, in a collation for German characters,
Strasse and Straße are
equal; in other collations they are not. If either string is the
empty sequence, compare()
returns the empty sequence.
Defined in
XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators section 7.3, “Equality and Comparison of Strings.”
Example
Here’s a stylesheet that uses compare() in several different
ways:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- compare1.xsl --> <xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output method="text"/> <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:text>
Here are some tests of the compare() </xsl:text> <xsl:text>function:
</xsl:text> <xsl:text>
 compare('Lily', 'lily') = </xsl:text> <xsl:value-of select="compare('Lily', 'lily')"/> <xsl:text>
 compare('Lily', 'Lily') = </xsl:text> <xsl:value-of select="compare('Lily', 'Lily')"/> <xsl:text>
 compare('Lily', </xsl:text> <xsl:text>'&#x4C;&#x69;&#x6C;&#x79;') ...Get XSLT, 2nd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
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