RE: recognize character entities

>      <xsl:template match="*[matches(substring(text()[1], 1, 
> 1), '[&#592;-&#99999;]')]">
>          <xsl:copy>
>              ...
>          </xsl:copy>
>      </xsl:template>
> 
> strange is that the matches() regex allows only decimal 
> values as range. 

The expansion of the character references is done by the XML parser, which
has no idea that they form part of a regular expression. So if you tried it
in hex and it didn't work, you must have done something wrong.

Incidentally, if you're using characters above 65535 in regular expressions
with Saxon, I would recommend you do it on Java 5. The code that it
generates for JDK 1.4 is pretty horrendous. 

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