[xquery-talk] [xsl] Re: Random number generation : requirements

[Michael Sokolov]

On 5/6/2014 6:41 PM, Michael Kay mike at saxonica.com wrote:
>> My policy on side effects is: all expressions containing side effects are going to be evaluated in order
>>
> I do something like that in Saxon as well. But I don't attempt to define what "in order" means; for example, the order in which different global variables are evaluated. Doing this in the spec would be much more problematic.
>
You don't think it would be reasonable to say something to the effect 
that the order in which non-deterministic expressions are evaluated is 
non-deterministic (ie implementation-defined)? Certainly it would be 
reasonable enough in the case of a random number generator.  Although I 
suppose if you are going to seed it, you would like the seed to effect 
the random numbers that are generated.

-Mike