dd mmm yyyy Date converted to number - attempt to sort

I have a list of items which contain a date in the format dd mmm yyyy.  I
want to sort these entries by date.  To do so I have used the following
code:

<xsl:variable name="FORMATTER" select="java:java.text.SimpleDateFormat.new(&quot;dd MMM yyyy&quot;)"/>
  <xsl:variable name="NUMBER_FORMATTER" select="java:java.text.DecimalFormat.new(&quot;00000000000000&quot;)"/>

.......................
.......................

 <xsl:for-each select="CashSettlementFlow">
                                  <xsl:variable name="SETTLEMENT_DATE" select="string(dateAdjusted)"/>
                                  <xsl:variable name="SETTLEMENT_JAVA_DATE" select="java:parse($FORMATTER,$SETTLEMENT_DATE)"/>
                                  <xsl:variable name="SETTLEMENT_JAVA_TIME" select="java:getTime($SETTLEMENT_JAVA_DATE)"/>
                                  <xsl:variable name="SETTLEMENT_PADDED_NUMBER" select="java:format($NUMBER_FORMATTER,$SETTLEMENT_JAVA_TIME)"/>
                                  <!-- <xsl:sort select="*[name()=$SETTLEMENT_PADDED_NUMBER]"/> -->
                                  <xsl:sort select="$SETTLEMENT_PADDED_NUMBER"/>

As can be seen I first convert the date into a number and it is this number which I want to sort on (this is within a transform which creates HTML
output for display).

This produces the error:

XSL Error: pattern = '$SETTLEMENT_PADDED_NUMBER'
VariableReference given for variable out of context or without definition!  Name = SETTLEMENT_PADDED_NUMBER, source tree node: CashSettlementFlow
XSL Error: SAX Exception
Exception in thread "main" org.apache.xalan.xslt.XSLProcessorException: pattern = '$SETTLEMENT_PADDED_NUMBER'
VariableReference given for variable out of context or without definition!  Name = SETTLEMENT_PADDED_NUMBER

Can anyone advise how I can utilise the variable in the sort function?




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