Hi Ihe,

On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 4:05 PM, Ihe Onwuka <ihe.onwuka@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> the same way that I say that applying an ordering semantic to
> something that is unordered is paradoxical.

As has been discussed, the position() and last() functions have
ordering semantics that relates to the instance sequence (which most
likely exists in a XSLT stylesheet at run-time). This ordering is not
related to the document order of an XML instance.

Also, a sequence may contain heterogeneous collection of items (like
elements, attributes, atomic values all in one sequence). For e.g, if
you do,

<!-- iterate elements and attributes together -->
<xsl:for-each select="elem | @*">
    <xsl:value-of select="position()"/>
</xsl:for-each>

Then the value of position() in this case, is the position of context
item (which could be an element or attribute).



-- 
Regards,
Mukul Gandhi