How do I write XSLT so that the processor ignores comments when calculating the position of other elements?
I expect that the XSLT processor will filter out comments before applying the other template rules, but with a comment after the last list item, the test not(position()=last()) fails.
How can I remove the comments before that test?
XML input:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<ul>
<li>fish1</li>
<li>fish2</li>
<li>fish3</li>
<li>fish4</li>
<!--
<li>fish5</li>
-->
</ul>
</html>
XSLT:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet
version="2.0"
xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="text" encoding="utf-8" indent="no" />
<xsl:strip-space elements="*" />
<xsl:template match="comment()" />
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:apply-templates />
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="xhtml:ul">
<xsl:apply-templates />
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="xhtml:li">
<xsl:apply-templates />
<xsl:if test="not(position()=last())">
<xsl:text>, </xsl:text>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Output with SaxonJ-HE 12.1:
fish1, fish2, fish3, fish4,
You could replace test="not(position()=last())" with test="following-sibling::*".