Messieurs,

   thanks for all the responses which, however, weren't really too
helpful despite their references to dungeons, dragons, and the like
and despite the different alternative names for xsl:variable. ;-)
I found a solution for my problem - I had some other bug in my
code. Once I got rid off that it actually turned out I
can treat xsl:variables as... well, variables. In particular, I 
can write
<xsl:variable name="var" select="1"/> and then
<xsl:variable name="var" select="$var + 1"/>
But before I get lynched here I better stop my heresy. Anyway, if
this forum accepts suggestions for improvements for xslt, then
let me suggest to add "proper" variables to xslt - for the sake
of all those freaks (like me) who simply forget to think in terms
of scopes all the time. ;-)

- Joerg
Dr. Joerg M. Colberg
Econovo Software, Inc.
joerg.colberg@xxxxxxxxxxx

PS: The reason why I was dealing with all that stuff is the
    following: I want to process two branches of an xml tree
    at the same time. Both branches are isomorphic in their
    structure. One branch contains data, the other one contains
    processing information. I loop over the processing information
    (which defines my output in the broadest sense) and use
    "variables" to jump across the data branch. The reason for
    this weird stuff was that I wrote an xsl which generates an
    xsl from html. :-)


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