XSLT, 2nd Edition

Name

[2.0] distinct-values()

Given a sequence, returns a new sequence containing one copy of each unique value in the original sequence.

Syntax

xs:anyAtomicType* distinct-values(xs:anyAtomicType*)
xs:anyAtomicType* distinct-values(xs:anyAtomicType*, $collation as xs:string)

Inputs

A sequence of atomic values. distinct-values() also has an optional argument specifying a collation algorithm. If present, the collation algorithm is used to determine whether two values are different from each other.

Output

A sequence containing only one copy of each atomic value in the original sequence. Some minor complications are as follows:

• When distinct-values() returns its result sequence, the order in which the unique values are returned is implementation-defined. Also, within a group of values that have the same value, which value is returned is implementation-defined.

• If the input sequence is the empty sequence, the empty sequence is returned. Passing the empty sequence to distinct-values() does not raise an error.

• When comparing xs:float and xs:double values, positive zero and negative zero are considered equal. Also, if there are numbers with the value NaN (not a number), only one of those values will be in the result sequence.

• When comparing xs:date, xs:dateTime, and xs:time values, if those values don’t have a timezone component, their timezone is considered to be the timezone returned by the implicit-timezone() function. Also be aware that xs:date, xs:dateTime, and xs:time values can be equal even ...