RE: [xsl] Functional programming in XSLT (revised)

["Michael Kay" <mhkay at iclway dot co dot uk>]

Alexey:
> > The <fxsl:function> declarations are allowed at any place, where
> > <xsl:variable> declarations are allowed. In particular, function
> > declarations can be top-level or local to a template.
>
Jeni:
> I was thinking about this after reading your last proposal - local
> function declarations in the same way as you get local variables.  I
> quite like it (it has a symmetry) but I couldn't think of why I'd ever
> need it.
>

If you'd never used a language with local variables, you'd wonder why you
ever need them. Once you've used a language with local functions, you spend
the rest of your life cursing languages that only offer global functions.

Having said that, I made saxon:function available at the top-level only,
because I didn't want to spend the rest of my life explaining the concept of
local functions, and juistifying why they should have access to local
variables declared outside the function body.

Mike Kay
Software AG


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