Thanks,
ac

...more simply?

<xsl:template match="item[description = ('word1', 'word2', 'word3')]">
   .. process the item ..
 </xsl:template>

Is there a performance advantage to the variable or is the match pattern sequence optimized anyway (e.g. Saxon)?

Shouldn't make any difference performance-wise (both equally bad...). But he
said he wanted the word list in a separate place for maintainability.

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