From: bdarcus@...
Date: 2005-06-27T03:35:39+09:00
Subject: Re: grouping/sorting [newbie question]


Ryan Leavengood wrote:
> bdarcus@gmail.com wrote:
> > Thanks Ryan.  Certainly less verbose than xslt!
>
> Generally so. Here is an article by Martin Fowler about his switch from
> XSLT to Ruby for processing XML:
>
> http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/MovingAwayFromXslt.html

I saw that, though it'd be nice to have a fully functional example to
try out.  I couldn't manage how to get it working.

Also, while Fowler's comments may apply well to XSLT 1.0, 2.0 adds a
lot of power to the language.  Still, it only goes so far of course,
which is why I'm interested in Ruby and Python.

> > What is the "||=[]" bit doing?
>
> That is a bit of a Ruby idiom (that comes from Perl I think.) It is
> equivalent to var = var || []. If var is initially nil, it becomes a new
> array, and whenever the above code is called again, var is just
> re-assigned to itself.

E.g. it only creates a new "group" if one doesn't already exist?  Was
wondering how to do that, so thanks for this!

Bruce