Increment a value in XSLT

Question

I\'m reasonably new to xlst and am confused as to whether there is any way to store a value and change it later, for example incrementing a variable in a loop.

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Answer 1

I ran into that myself two years ago. You need to do use recursion for this. I forget the exact syntax, but this site might help:

Tip: Loop with recursion in XSLT

The strategy works basically as follows: Replace for loop with a template "method". Have it recieve a parameter i. Do the body of the for loop in the template method. If i > 0 call the template method again (recursion) with i - 1 as parameter.

Pseudocode:

for i = 0 to 10:
   print i

becomes:

def printer(i):
   print i
   if i < 10:
      printer(i + 1)
printer(0)

Please note that using position() in a xsl:for-each (see other answers) can be simpler if all you want to do is have a variable increment. Use the kind of recursion explained here if you want a more complicated loop / condition.