Re: Parameterized entities?

Thank you David. It is a shame XML doesn’t support parameterized ENTITY’s.

I decided to write a simple preprocessor using the Flex lexical analyzer.  It converts the following “fake” ENTITY references:


    &file('ARPT.XML');

    &file('NAV.XML');

    &file('TRM.XML');

into these XSLT variable declarations:

    <xsl:variable name='ARPT.XML' select="doc('ARPT.XML')"/>
    <xsl:variable name='NAV.XML' select="doc('NAV.XML')"/>
    <xsl:variable name='TRM.XML' select="doc('TRM.XML')"/>

For those interested, the Flex lexical analyzer that I created is shown below. Here’s how I run it from a command line:

more sample.xsl | preprocess > result.xsl

Here is the preprocessor (Flex lexical analyzer). I am sure that a skilled C programmer could write much better C code (the stuff within braces below) to extract the filename. If you are a skilled C programmer and have suggestions for improvement, I would love to hear them!

%option noyywrap
%{
#include <string.h>
%}
%%
"&file('"[A-Z]+".XML');"           {
                                                           char replacement[20];
                                                           char *start = strstr(yytext, "'");
                                                           char *end   = strstr(yytext, ".");
                                                           int length = end - start - 1;
                                                           char *marker = start + 1;
                                                           int i;
                                                           for (i=0; i<length; i++)
                                                              replacement[i] = *marker++;
                                                           replacement[i]    = '\0';
                                                           fprintf(stdout, "<xsl:variable name='%s.XML' select=\"doc('%s.XML')\"/>", replacement, replacement);
                               }
%%
int main()
{yylex();}