On Fri, 6 Mar 2026 13:07:25 -0000
"Martin Honnen martin.honnen@xxxxxx"
<xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 06/03/2026 13:15, Schimon Jehudah sch@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > Is it valid or possible to allocate XPath directives as variables
> > and apply the variables as XPath directives, similarly to "eval"?
> >
> > <xsl:variable name="feed-subtitle"  
> >                select="'atom:subtitle'"/>  
> >
> > <xsl:variable name="entry-iterate"  
> >                select="'atom:entry'">  
> >
> > Doing so, would significantly reduce the amount of repeated code.  
> 
> In general, in XSLT 1.0 and 2.0 as standardized by the W3C, there is
> no "eval" feature, only XSLT 3.0 has that with xsl:evaluate.
> 
> On the other hand, the most used XSLT 1.0 processor is probably
> libxslt or xsltproc and depending on its configuration I think it has
> support for EXSLT and its 
> https://exslt.github.io/dyn/functions/evaluate/index.html function. 
> There are also some other proprietary extension for "eval" in
> existing XSLT 1.0 or 2.0 processors. Thus, if you want to use XSLT
> 1.0 and can control which XSLT 1.0 processor you use, you can choose
> one with support for EXSLT's evaluate or with support for a
> proprietary evaluate function. If you expect your code to be portable
> and usable by any XSLT 1.0 processor I think you are out of options.

Yes. I utilize xsltproc to enable preview of RSS with Chawan.

I will attempt to utilize EXSLT.

Thank you,
Schimon