I think you're not making difference between a match pattern and an XPath
expression. Match paterns are only a restricted subset of the set of
syntactically correct XPath expressions.

As Wendell pointed out, this distinction is at the heart of XSLT.

=====
Cheers,

Dimitre Novatchev.
http://fxsl.sourceforge.net/ -- the home of FXSL


"David Tolpin" <dvd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:200312021106.hB2B6cZg057162@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >     David> Because not specifying an axis is the same as specifying
> >     David> child:: axis.  There is no context in wich the root node
> >     David> resides on the child axis.
> >
> >     David> self::node() in the context of the root element will match
> >     David> the root node.
> >
> > It would, but the 'self::' axis isn't allowed in patterns.
> >
>
>
> <xsl:transform
> xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
> version="1.0">
>   <xsl:template match="/">
>     <xsl:for-each select="self::node()">
>        <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
>     </xsl:for-each>
>   </xsl:template>
> </xsl:transform>
>
>  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
>
>




 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list