I bumped into some surprising function behavior. I have the following query:
declare namespace math = "java:java.lang.Math"; declare function local:choose-phrase ( $phrase as xs:string ) as xs:string { let $prefix := local:choose( ("Absolutely, ", "It's likely that ", "The odds are good that ", "There's a fairly good chance that ", "There's a light chance that ", "It's uncertain that ", "Chances are not good that ", "It's doubtful that ", "It's unlikely that ", "There's no way that ") ) return fn:concat($prefix,$phrase) }; declare function local:choose ( $arg as xs:string* ) as xs:string { let $count := fn:count($arg) let $random := math:floor(math:random() * $count) + 1 return $arg[xs:integer($random)] }; local:choose( ( "Phrase 1", "Phrase 2" ) )
When I execute this (say in the GUI tool) it's supposed print either "Phrase 1" or "Phrase 2". Instead it prints a random choice from the function 'choose-phrase' as if it was called with an empty string as argument, which is very strange.
When I remove the 'choose-phrase' function altogether, the query behaves correctly. If I then paste the 'choose-phrase' after the 'choose' function, it also behaves correctly. But declaring 'choose-phrase' before 'choose' gives me an unexpected result.
The only thing I can think of is that 'choose-phrase' calls 'choose' which is declared later. I don't know if that's actually allowed. But even so, it should give an error instead of seemingly doing something random.