Re: Can a named template return a node list?

> I understand that custom:function is basically a method in a .NET class, 
> which does return a pointer/reference to an existing node in the current 
> XML document, and I can reference attributes of that node using 
> $whatever/@attr instead of $whatever/*/@attr.

both syntaxes work, it just depends what you wnat to select.

$whatever/@attr
selects the attr attribute of each node in the node set bound to
$whatever.

$whatever/*/@attr
selects the attr attribute of each element child of each node in the
node set bound to $whatever.

If you use 
<xsl:variable> with content then it generates a result tree fragment
corresponding to a root node (/) with children whatever nodes are
generated by the content of teh xsl:variable. so then if you go
<xsl:variable name="whatever" select="x:node-set($x)"/>
then clealy you would want to use 
$whatever/*/@attr
as root nodes have no attributes so you need to select elements first.
On the other hand if you go
<xsl:variable name="whatever" select="x:node-set($x)/*"/>
Then $whatever is a node set of element nodes and you can go
$whatever/@attr
to select their attributes.

But in your case you don't want to use x:node-set at all, just select
the nodes you want directly using selct on the xsl:variable.

>   I guess this is because  call-template always returns what I would
>   call a string, 

No call-template generates nodes not a string, but it doesn't return
anything it places teh nodes into the current output, witherthe main
result document or a result tree fragment being built in a variable.
A result tree frafgment os very different from a string. (It's almost
exactly the same thing as a node set with a single root node, except for
an essentially artificial restriction that you can not query into it.

> ..

> need to know that they sometimes need to add /* to dereference
> variables.

The /* is nothing to do with it being a variable it is just usual XPath
syntax distinguishing whether you want to find the attribute of this node
or this node's children.

David

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