The xsl:sequence
element is used to construct arbitrary sequences.
It may select any sequence of nodes and/or atomic values, and essentially adds these to the result
sequence. The input may be specified either by a select
attribute, or by the instructions
contained in the xsl:sequence
instruction, or both (the select
attribute
is processed first). Nodes and atomic values are included in the result sequence directly. Unlike
xsl:copy-of
, no copy is made.
There are two main usage scenarios. The first is copying atomic values into a tree. For example:
<e>
<xsl:sequence select="1 to 5"/>
<br/>
<xsl:sequence select="6 to 10"/>
</e>
which produces the output <e>1 2 3 4 5<br/>6 7 8 9 10</e>
.
The second, more important, is constructing a sequence-valued variable. A variable
is sequence-valued if the variable binding element (e.g. xsl:variable
has non-empty content, an as
attribute, and no select
attribute.
For example:
<xsl:variable name="seq" as="xs:integer *">
<xsl:for-each select="1 to 5">>
<xsl:sequence select=". * ."/>
</xsl:for-each/>
</xsl:variable>
This produces the sequence (1, 4, 9, 16, 25) as the value of the variable.
The xsl:sequence
instruction may be used to produce any sequence of nodes and/or
atomic values.
If nodes are constructed within a sequence-valued variable, they will be parentless. For example, the following code creates a variable whose value is a sequence of three parentless attributes:
<xsl:variable name="seq" as="attribute() *">
<xsl:attribute name="a">10</xsl:attribute>
<xsl:attribute name="b">20</xsl:attribute>
<xsl:attribute name="a">30</xsl:attribute>
</xsl:variable>
It is quite legitimate to have two attributes in the sequence with the same name; there is
no conflict until an attempt is made to add them both to the same element. The attributes can
be added to an element by using <xsl:copy-of select="$seq"/>
within an
xsl:element
instruction or within a literal result element. At this stage the usual
rule applies: if there are duplicate attributes, the last one wins.