XML Schema

bonekrusher · March 12th, 2007, 07:43 PM

Hi, I recently came accross some XML Expressions that I am trying to understand:

<xs:pattern value="[^~|\s]"/>

"^" is a range, "|" is an "or" operator and "\s" is spaces, what does the "~" mean"?

Thanks

mhkay · March 13th, 2007, 03:57 AM

^ means not, ~ and | represent themselves, and \s represents whitespace, so this expression matches any single character other than tilde, vertical bar, or a whitespace character.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference

bonekrusher · March 13th, 2007, 05:36 AM

I was way off. Thanks for the help.

Can you point me to a link (or book) that clearly defines these expressions?

As always,

Thank you

mhkay · March 13th, 2007, 06:53 AM

There's a link in my sig. The XPath 2.0 Prog Ref has a detailed appendix covering the XPath regular expression language, which is the same as the XML Schema language with one or two extensions.

I think Priscilla Walmsley also has good coverage in "Definitive XML Schema".

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference

bonekrusher · March 13th, 2007, 06:59 AM

Thank you! Ironicly, I just ordered XPath 2.0 Prog Ref (2 days ago).

also, I found a cool tester online:

http://regexlib.com/RETester.aspx

This seems to be a nice tester, but I need to learn the syntax.

Thanks!

joefawcett · March 13th, 2007, 08:47 AM

Strange, I replied to this post but it never showed up. The link I gave was: http://www.regular-expressions.info/reference.html

--

Joe (Microsoft MVP - XML)

bonekrusher · March 13th, 2007, 07:02 PM

Thanks!