but my reaction has always been that the number function is there for a reason

You don't believe in anachy and accidental development via evolution?:-)

number() forces coersion to numbers at places where it wouldn't happen
automatically. Notably

foo[@bar]

takes foo elements that have a bar attribute

foo[number(@bar)] takes the foo element whose position() is equal to
the numeric value of its bar attribute.

test="@foo=1"

is false if the source has foo="1.0"

but

test="number(@foo)=1"

would be true in that case.

David

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