Saxon Documentation

Full Contents

About Saxon

Changes in this Release

Licensing

Using XSLT 2.0

Using XQuery

Handling Source Documents

XML Schema Processing

XPath API for Java

Saxon on .NET

Extensibility

Saxon Extensions
	Introduction
	EXSLT Extensions
	Extension attributes (XSLT only)
	Additional serialization parameters
»	Extension functions
	Extension instructions

Sample Saxon Applications

The Saxon SQL Extension

XSLT Elements

XPath 2.0 Expression Syntax

Function Library

Standards Conformance

saxon:deep-equal()

saxon:deep-equal($seq1 as item()*, $seq2 as item()*, $collation as xs:string?, $flags as xs:string) ==> xs:boolean

This function compares two sequences $seq1 and $seq2 for deep equality. The two sequences are supplied in the first two arguments. In the absence of any $flags, the function returns the same result as the deep-equal function in the standard XPath library. The $flags argument is used to modify the way in which the comparison is performed.

The $collation argument is mandatory. Supply an empty sequence to use the default collation.

The flags argument is a string containing characters acting as flags that cause the function to behave differently from the standard fn:deep-equal() function. The following flags are defined:

N	Include namespace nodes in the comparison. For two elements to be deep-equal, they must have the same in-scope namespaces (that is, same prefix and same URI).
F	Include namespace prefixes in the comparison. For two elements or attributes to be equal, their names must use the same namespace prefix (or none).
C	Include comment nodes in the comparison. For two element or document nodes to be deep-equal, they must have the same comment node children.
P	Include processing-instruction nodes in the comparison. For two element or document nodes to be deep-equal, they must have the same processing-instruction node children.
J	Join adjacent text nodes (for example, nodes either side of an ignored comment)
S	Compare string values rather than typed values of simple-typed elements and attributes.
A	Compare type annotations on elements and attributes. The type annotations must match exactly.
w	Exclude whitespace text nodes from the comparison. Any whitespace text node in either tree is ignored (except when determining the typed value of an element annotated with a simple type or a complex type with simple content).
?	Explain reason for a non-match. If the result is not-equal, a warning message explaining the reason will be sent to the ErrorListener. (In general, a sequence of warning messages will be sent, starting with the lowest-level difference and moving up the tree).