Turns out I was using xsl:value-of instead of xsl:sequence, doh.  Thanks
though.

-----Original Message-----
From: Dimitre Novatchev [mailto:dnovatchev@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2008 1:01 PM
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re:  node returned from a user function is no longer a
node??

> So it seems that it's being converted to a string for some reason, so
> I try to set the function's return type to as="node()" or
as="element()"
> (don't know the difference) but now the compiler seems to require an
> object to always be returned, a case which I don't know how to handle
> (returning () causes compiler complaint too).

Probably what you want is:

  element()?

which means that the return type is a sequence of  0 or 1 elements.