stylesheet 1 and stylesheet 3 shows the different ways of setting an xsl:variable, XSLT stylesheet 2 and XSLT stylesheet 4 of setting xsl:param.

Stylesheet can do have several variables with the same name. The XSL stylesheet 1 demonstrates how to recover value of the global variable which has same name as that of the local one. Value of the local variable is bounded to the xsl:when element. The rest of the template therefore sees only a global variable.

Parameters for the template can be passed with an xsl:with-param element. If a template contains the xsl:param element having same name as that of an name attribute of xsl:with-param, this value is been used. The XSL stylesheet 1 shows the typical example. If you do want to pass the variable, you should have to define this variable with the xsl:param element. Look at XSL stylesheet 2 for the wrong approach.

The variable can hold result tree fragment. Operations that are permitted on the result tree fragment are the subset of those permitted on the node-set. The Operation is been permitted on result tree fragment only if that operation would have to be permitted on the string, Operation on string may involve first converting a string to the number or the boolean. In particular, it is not been permitted to use " /, //, and []" operators on the result tree fragments. When the permitted operation is been performed on the result tree fragment, it is been performed exactly in the way as it would be on a equivalent node-set.