RE: how to change variable values ?

No - this is not possible.

When XSL was being designed, this question came up frequently. It was
decided that the advantages of having a side-effects free language (i.e.
without the ability to change the value of variables once the stylesheet has
gone through the parser) outweighed the annoyance of old school programmers
(who are used to changing the value of variables).

Basically, if you parse once and only once, and ban any changes to the
stylesheet, you will get (in theory) much faster processing.

There are very few things you absolutely have to have "real" variables
for... I'll post a solution to your specific problem when I have some time
to look at it.

Ben


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