Thanx David,It worked.I was all the time thinking whether it's taking the
string or is it looking for the element matching.Now I understood.

Francis

> 
> > <xsl:variable name="first" select="John"/>
> 
> That declares $first to be the node set matching the pattern John
> and you haven't got any elements <John> so this is the empty node
> set and this coerces to the empty string.
> 
> <xsl:variable name="first" select="'John'"/>
>                                    ^    ^
> makes $first the string John.
> 
> David
 


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