At 07:13 PM 11/30/2004, Steven Legg wrote:
I don't like any solution that requires non-disjoint matching against
substrings, though with spaces it can be finessed.
How about this:
Prepare the attribute value such that it always
starts with a space, ends with a space, and every
inner sequence of spaces is collapsed (or
expanded) to two spaces. In all cases, if the
string is all spaces, it would collapsed to three
spaces.
Prepare the assertion values for ordering and
equality in the same fashion.
Prepare initial values such that they always
start with as space, all inner sequences
are collapsed to two spaces and any trailing
spaces collapsed to a single space. If
the value is all spaces, it collapses to
a single space.
Prepare any values such that they always
start and end with a space and all inner
spaces collapse to two spaces. If
the value is all spaces, it collapses to
a single space.
Prepare final values such that they always
end with as space, all inner sequences
are collapsed to two spaces and any leading
spaces collapsed to a single space. If
the value is all spaces, it collapses to
a single space.
Kurt