FunctX XSLT Function Library > Atomic Values of All Types > Missing Values >

fn:empty

Whether a value is the empty sequence

Description

The fn:empty function checks whether sequence is empty, meaning that it contains zero items. A sequence is not considered empty just because it only contains a zero-length string, the value 0, or an element with empty content.

It is often unnecessary to call the fn:empty function because sequences are automatically converted to their effective boolean value where a boolean value is expected.

This description is © Copyright 2007, Priscilla Walmsley. It is excerpted from the book XQuery by Priscilla Walmsley, O'Reilly, 2007. For a complete explanation of this function, please refer to Appendix A of the book.

Arguments and Return Type

Examples

<in-xml>
     <a></a>
     <b/>
     <c>xyz</c>
   </in-xml>

empty( ('a', 'b', 'c') )

false

empty( () )

true

empty(0)

false

empty($in-xml/a)

false

empty($in-xml/b)

false

empty($in-xml/c)

false

empty($in-xml/foo)

true

See Also

History