SAXONICA

Saxon Documentation
Full Contents
About Saxon
Changes in this Release
Notices
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:sort()

The `saxon:sort` function is provided primarily for use in XPath, which has no built-in sorting capability. In XSLT it is preferable to use `xsl:sort`, in XQuery to use a FLWOR expression with an `order by` clause.

saxon:sort($seq as item()*) => item()*

This form of the function sorts a sequence of nodes and/or atomic values. For atomic values, the value itself is used as the sort key. For nodes, the atomized value is used as the sort key. The atomized value must be a single atomic value. The values must all be comparable. Strings are sorted using codepoint collation.

saxon:sort($seq as item()*, $stored-expression as jt:net.sf.saxon.functions.Evaluate-PreparedExpression) => node()?

This form of the function sorts a sequence of nodes and/or atomic values, using the supplied stored expression to compute the sort key for each item in the sequence. The computed sort key must either be a single atomic value, or a node that atomizes to a single atomic value, and the sort keys must all be comparable. Strings are sorted using codepoint collation.

A stored expression may be obtained as the result of calling the saxon:expression function.

The stored expression is evaluated for each item in $seq in turn, with that item as the context node, with the context position equal to the position of that item in $seq, and with the context size equal to the size of $seq.

Example: saxon:sort(sale, saxon:expression('@price * @qty')) will evaluate price times quantity for each child <sale> element, and return the `sale` elements in ascending numeric order of this value.

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