I'm not familiar with the restrictions of 1.0, but could you not simply
do this?

<xsl:template match="/">
  <xsl:variable name="merged-docs">
     <xsl:apply-templates select="files"/>
  </xsl:variable>

 ... Do what ever with $merged-docs from here....
</template>


Thanks!
Angela

-----Original Message-----
From: Lars Kappert [mailto:larskappert@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 7:33 AM
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE:  XSLT merge documents into variable

Thank you very much for your suggestion. Although a little of it doesn't
work here (this line: <xsl:value-of
select="sum(exslt:node-set($sumOfAmounts)/num)" />), this is a solution
that directly accomplishes the desired result in my post. My examples
files are kept simple for easier understanding the issue; so this
solution is not so well extensible I guess. But what I would really
appreciate to see is something more conforming to my question: how do I
really put the contents of the two files in a variable first and then
work with that result in another template?

Correct me if I'm wrong!