> >    <xsl:variable name="vLexResults" as="item()+"
> >     select="if(empty($pCurLexeme)) ... else ()"/>
> 
> 
> Thanks for reporting this.  I did't have any problems running 
> the tests with Saxon Basic 8.9.2J
> 

As a result of investigating Jeni's Levenshtein distance stylesheet last
weekend, the next Saxon version will push compile-time type checking down
into the branches of a conditional, which will give you a compile-time error
for the above construct. At the moment, you'll only get an error if the else
branch is actually taken at run-time.

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