It's not possible to reconstruct any example from the posted fragments
but one observation: these are not equivalent:


              <xsl:text>"</xsl:text>
            <xsl:value-of select="'ZXZX'"/>
            <xsl:text>"</xsl:text>


          <xsl:text>"ZXZX"</xsl:text>


The first makes a sequence of three text nodes, with values ", ZXZX and "

The second makes a single text node, with value "ZXZX"


in some circumstances (for example if you copy these to an element in
the result tree ) these things are equivalent, as text nodes are merged,
but in other cases, for example if you directly extract nodes such as
$VariableAsItem[1] then you will get different results.

The variable name VariableAsItem is a bit misleading as it suggests a
single item but it is typed as item()* allowing an arbitrary sequence.

David