Re: Re: Incrementing a Global variable

> Beleive it or not there is a strong need of one IMHO.
> there was no need of deprecating xsl:assign or fixing
> a bug
>  where <xsl:variable name="a" select="$a+1" />
> worked some time ago.

??? No version of XSL has ever allowed such a construct.
I haven't even heard of any processor that had a bug that would allow
such a thing. Why do you think this was allowed previously?

Saxon has a saxon:assign extension that implements a assignment system
but it is much easier to do this in a processor specific extension. the
problem with assignment is that it forces a particular evaluation order
on the code, otherwise the assignments appen in a different order and
the processing order becomes visible. It would be virtually impossible
to specify in general the result  of assignment in XSLT as 
evaluation order is not specified. It is much easier to specify the
result of saxon:assign as it explictly is tied to saxon's evaluation
strategy. I've seen Mike recomend saxon:assign for exactly this use: by
putting such variables in your templates you can get informaation on
what saxon did, how often a template was evaluated etc. This can be
useful debugging information, but isn't expected to get the same result
on different processors.

David

________________________________________________________________________
This e-mail has been scanned for all viruses by Star Internet. The
service is powered by MessageLabs. For more information on a proactive
anti-virus service working around the clock, around the globe, visit:
http://www.star.net.uk
________________________________________________________________________

 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list