In the first case, you aren't actually passing a string: you are passing a
tree consisting of a document node and a text node as its child. This is a
much more heavyweight structure than the string which you pass in the second
case, because nodes have identity, base URI, parent pointers, etc.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/ 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kevin Rodgers [mailto:kevin.rodgers@xxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 27 January 2005 15:10
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  conditional instruction vs. conditional expression
> 
> What are the advantages and disadvantages of passing a string 
> parameter
> via a conditional instruction (XPath 1.0):
> 
>     <xsl:with-param name="content">
>       <xsl:if test="mb3e:org_list/mb3e:org_code[@type='APPR' and
>                                                 text()='ANSI']">
>         <xsl:text>*</xsl:text>
>       </xsl:if>
>     </xsl:with-param>
> 
> vs. via a conditional expression (XPath 2.0):
> 
>     <xsl:with-param name="content"
>          select="if (mb3e:org_list/mb3e:org_code[@type='APPR' and
>                                                  text()='ANSI'])
>                  then '*'
>                  else ''"/>
> 
> Thanks,
> -- 
> Kevin Rodgers