> Whenever a sequence involves a node, isn't it implicitly a 
> reference? 

Yes, it is.

> The only scenario I can think of where this might 
> not be true is in XQuery, where you can have
> 
> (element a, element b, element c)

Even here, the containment is not exclusive, since you can filter this
sequence to get a new sequence that "contains" the same nodes.
> 
> However, this is not, to my understanding, supported in XSLT2.
> 

XSLT 2.0 can now do this too, for example

<xsl:variable name="e" as="element()*">
 <a/><b/><c/>
</xsl:variable>

Michael Kay


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