RE: XSLT functions in XPath

> http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/javax/xml/xpath/XPathC
> onstants.html#NODESET
> 
> Xerces throws an exception,
> Saxon returns an ArrayList (which is more useful, but 
> unexpected according to the spec ) 

When implementing the JAXP XPath API I had to make decisions about how to
extend it to support XPath 2.0, since as written it's really designed for
XPath 1.0. Also, it's primarily focused on supporting access to the DOM. I
decided (rightly or wrongly) that it made sense always to return the results
as a List, rather than special-casing the situation where the result is a
sequence of DOM nodes and using a DOM NodeList for that special case.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/