In Update Section 3.2.2, upd:applyUpdates, Rule 3 specifies some post-processing of text nodes after all the update primitives on the PUL have beeen applied. Here is what it says:

"If, as a result of the above steps, the children property of some node contains adjacent text nodes, these adjacent text nodes are merged into a single node."

The reason for this rule is to avoid violating the Data Model constraint that prohibits adjacent text nodes among the children of any node (Data Model Section 6 Rule 2). BUT the above rules does not go far enough, because there is another Data Model constraint that prohibits empty text nodes among the children of any node (Data Model Section 6 Rule 3). Therefore, we need to add one more processing step to upd:applyUpdates Rule 3: "If the children property of some node contains an empty text node, that empty text node is removed from the children property."

This change will make our update semantics consistent with the semantics of element constructors (XQuery Section 3.7.1.3 Rule 3), which also merges adjacent text nodes and deletes empty text nodes among the children of a constructed element.

Regards,
--Don Chamberlin