Steve,
At 02:24 PM 7/12/2006, you wrote:
I suspect I am simply not a high-enough level user to exploit these
benefits to any degree, but I can understand their benefit.
You've already benefited! XSLT has been around since before the turn
of the century, stable, and here for you to use it. It solves a great
many problems easily, and for those it does not, an informed user
community exists with whom you are free to brood. It's hard to
imagine that all this would be true if the language were as
drastically in need of amendment, at a fundamental level, as you imply.
However, I suspect that an option to make variables modifiable--at
the expense of
the points mentioned--would come under wide use, quickly. =)
See
http://stx.sourceforge.net/
and the links therefrom.
Also, Saxon has a variable (re-)assignment extension, saxon:assign,
which you are free to use if using Saxon (a very popular, very
conformant XSLT engine) -- at your own risk. (And you may have to use
an older version of Saxon: see the documentation at
http://www.saxonica.com/documentation/extensions/instructions/assign.html.
:-> )
The fact that these were not immediately proposed as providing
obvious solutions to your problems are perhaps indicators that your
speculation is incorrect -- reassigning variables is something we
mostly live quite happily without.
Regards,
Wendell
*Goes away for 3 days to understand how Dimitre's solution actually works*
(Or come to Extreme Markup Languages next month in Montreal, where
Dimitre will happily explain it to you. :-)
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