RE: meaning of (salary, bonus)

> 
>      (salary, bonus)
> 
> with the following commentary: "This expression contains all 
> salary children of the context node followed by all bonus children"
> 
> Can this expression be used outside a location path? I can 
> see returning this expression as a function result, but can 
> someone provide other examples of valid use? And in such a 
> case, what is the meaning of "context node"?
> 

Sure, the expression can be used anywhere, for example

  fn:average((salary, bonus))

returns the average of this sequence - in this case it's actually the same
as

  fn:average(salary | bonus)

Or you could write:

  (salary, bonus)[. > 0]

to exclude the values that are negative.

In fact, writing the expression within a location path is one of the least
useful places to use it, since the results of a path expression are always
in document order. So person/(salary,bonus) actually returns the same result
as person/(salary|bonus).

The "context node" is exactly what it would be if you wrote the expression
"salary" instead of "(salary, bonus)".

Another common use case is when building a sequence recursively:

<xsl:function name="reverse">
  <xsl:param name="p"/>
  <xsl:result select="if ($p) 
                      then (reverse($p[position()!=1]), $p[1])
                      else ()"/>
</xsl:function>


Michael Kay