Package com.saxonica.ee.trans

Class Characteristic

java.lang.Object
com.saxonica.ee.trans.Characteristic
Direct Known Subclasses:
AncestorCharacteristic, GeneralComparisonOperand, NumericComparisonOperand, TokenMatchOperand
public abstract class Characteristic extends Object
A Characteristic represents a distinguishing feature of an item that may be used by several patterns in a rule chain, and which can usefully be evaluated once for all rules in the rule chain. Characteristics are evaluated in the course of evaluating preconditions, and their values may be used again when evaluating a different precondition. For example (a classic DITA use case), the tokenized value of an element's @class attribute is a characteristic that may be used by several preconditions that test for the presence of particular tokens in the value.

  • Constructor Details

    • Characteristic

      public Characteristic()

  • Method Details

    • getSlotNumber

      public final int getSlotNumber()
      Get the slot number allocated to the value of this characteristic in the RuleSearchState
      Returns:
      the allocated slot number

    • setSlotNumber

      public final void setSlotNumber(int slotNumber)
      Allocate a slot number to this characteristic in the RuleSearchState
      Parameters:
      slotNumber - the slot number to be allocated

    • evaluate

      public abstract Object evaluate(XPathContext context) throws XPathException
      Evaluate the value of this characteristic for the context item
      Parameters:
      context - the dynamic evaluation context; the context item is the item being matched
      Returns:
      the value of the characteristic
      Throws:
      XPathException - if evaluation of the characteristic fails