Dimitre Novatchev wrote:

>>In fact, I think the function you want is:
>>
>><xsl:function name="type:is-number" as="xs:boolean">
>> <xsl:param name="arg" as="xs:string"/>
>> <xsl:sequence select="matches($arg, '\d+')"/>
>></xsl:function>
>>    
>>
>
>This does not say what the type of the argument, originally passed to
>the function was.
>  
>
*absolutely*

>It might have been a string that is the string representation of a number:
>
>   "3.1415" (is a string)
>
>but this is completely different from:
>
>     3.1415 (is a number).
>
>What will really be useful is a function with an argument of item(),
>that returns the real type of the argument.
>  
>
agreed

>This would be trivial to achieve if same-arity function overloading was allowed.
>
>Does anybody know of another way?
>
>Or shall we propose an exslt:type-of()  ?
>  
>
dont know....I would like to think that the XSLT 2.0 draft is still open
to some last minute changes...

cheers, Jim Fuller