I have been using the xsltproc parser (part of GNOME's libxslt), and have run into an interesting problem.

When I try to execute a template returning a node-set, I try to execute a count() on the returned variable. This invariably gives me 1, which is not the desired answer; I need a count of particular nodes in the subset.

(My XSL stylesheet is not doing direct processing, but instead looping through the initial document to create specific pairings. It's a medical billing application.)

Here's an example of some of the code fragments that are causing trouble (I'm using EXSLT for some of the set functions):

      <xsl:variable name="subset">
             <xsl:call-template name="get-valid-diagnosis-set">
                      <xsl:with-param name="procedureset">
                             <xsl:value-of select="$set" />
                      </xsl:with-param>
             </xsl:call-template>
      </xsl:variable>

      <xsl:variable name="remaining" value="set:difference($set, $subset)" />
      <debug><xsl:text>remaining: </xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="count($remaining)"/></debug>

Thanks,
Jeff
([email protected])
FreeMED Software Foundation
http://freemedsoftware.com/

I am not in front of my work system at the moment
but I believe that set:diference may be returning
a result tree fragment rather than a node-set. If
this is the case you will need to convert the RTF
to a node-set before doing the count.

EXSLT provides the exsl:node-set function for this
purpose.

- F

I'm not sure why, but it didn't seem to do anything differently. I'll give you the other code segments around it:

        <xsl:template name="process-payer">
                <xsl:param name="patient" />
                <xsl:param name="payer" />
                <xsl:variable name="procedures" select="/rootnode/procedure[payerkey=$payer and patientkey=$patient]" />
                <xsl:variable name="procedurecount" select="count($procedures)" />

                <xsl:if test="count($procedures) &gt; 0">
                        <debug><xsl:text>process-payer procedure count is </xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="count($procedures)" /></debug>
                        <xsl:call-template name="process-procedure-set">
                                <xsl:with-param name="set">
                                        <xsl:value-of select="$procedures" />
                                </xsl:with-param>
                        </xsl:call-template>
                </xsl:if>
        </xsl:template>

        <xsl:template name="process-procedure-set">
                <xsl:param name="set" />

                <debug><xsl:text>passed set is </xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="count($set)" /></debug>


                <xsl:variable name="subset">
                        <xsl:call-template name="get-valid-diagnosis-set">
                                <xsl:with-param name="procedureset">
                                        <xsl:value-of select="$set" />
                                </xsl:with-param>
                        </xsl:call-template>
                </xsl:variable>
              ....
        </xsl:template>

---

The issue seems to be that while the first function returns that there are count() values of anywhere from 8 to 20 (which there should be in the test instance I'm running), the called procedure only counts 1. Using exsl:node-set() does not fix this.

Thanks,
Jeff
([email protected])
FreeMED Software Foundation
http://freemedsoftware.com/