> If I have an <xsl:apply-template select="some criterion"> or 
> <xsl:for-each select="some criterion"> statement in my 
> stylesheet, am I guranteed that the nodes will be processed 
> in the exact order that the qualifying nodes appear in the XML file?
> 

Yes, the nodes are processed in document order.

A caveat if you want to be pendantic: this means that the result of
processing node A will appear in the result tree before the result of
processing node B if and only if A is before B in the input document (in
both cases "before" refers to "document order"). This has nothing to do
with the chronological sequence of processing: the XSLT processor can
process the input backwards and create the result tree backwards if it
feels like it.

Michael Kay


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