differences between for-each and templates in xsl?

Question

Both xsl:for-each and xsl:template are used to retrieve nodes from xml in an xsl stylesheet. But what is the fundamental difference between them? P

Answer 1

These are to complete different XSLT instructions.

More than push vs. pull style, this is more like iteration vs. recursion.

xsl:for-each is an iterator instruction with all the benefits and constrains of iteration in a stateless declarative paradigm: a good processor should not polute the call stack.

xsl:apply-templates is a general recursion instruction. General in the sense that it's more powerful than xsl:call-template: you "throw" the selected nodes to the pattern matching mechanism, a truly "dynamic function invocation".