[xquery-talk] Finding context position when "order by" is in aFLWOR?

[Michael Kay]

> the point of the xsl:for-each reference was really to float 
> (again) the possibility of an iterator in XQuery that moves 
> the current item, which would be another possible approach.

I've sometimes experimented with the coding style:

declare function f($x as element()) {
  $x/(
    ... body of the function goes here ...

  )
}

but I don't really find it very comfortable. Sticking the $x in at the start
of every path expression gets tedious, but it's more familiar to readers.

Writing

let . := expr 
return expr

or

for . in expr return expr

would be nicer. But I'm not sure. The fact that some expressions in XQuery
change the focus and other similar expressions don't is confusing, but most
attempts to fix it are only likely to add to the confusion.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/