On 09.05.2012, at 17:21, Jakub Mal} wrote:

> You can give assign a type to v1 (and v2 as well) to make both variables
> behave the same.

Declaring the type for the variable v1 is the key here, thank you! I somehow
must have missed the vital "... and that has no as attribute." part in 9.4.

After doing that, I just need to be aware that the elements in the sequence
are no longer accessed via (e.g.) $v1/a, but $v1/self::a, i.e. they are not
children.

Thanks to all other respondents (Ken, David, Michael) for essentially pointing
out the same thing, but adding valuable additional perspectives to the issue.

Regards
Christian