Functions Returning Nodes in XSLT 2.0

    In XSLT 2.0 with Saxon 8.4...

    I've written helper methods that look like so.

    <xsl:function name="fn:user" as="element()">
      <xsl:param name="login"/>
      <xsl:copy-of
        select="document('users.xml')/users/user[login = $login]"/>
    </xsl:function>

    Making it easier to write select attributes.

    <xsl:value-of select="fn:user()/first-name"/>

    Some of my XPath is getting complicated, so I like to wrap it up
    into functions.

    I'm wondering if copy-of is smart enough to forgo copying in
    such cases. If not, I could see how it could get expensive to
    call fn:user every time I wanted a property.

    Is there a better practice for this sort of thing? 

--
Alan Gutierrez - alan@xxxxxxxxx
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