RE: [xml-dev] string() from XPath 1.0

["Michael Kay" <mike@saxonica.com>]

> while reading the description of the function string(), I 
> stumbled upon the following:
> 
> ``An object of a type other than the four basic types is 
> converted to a string in a way that is dependent on that type.''
> 
> Probably I'm overlooking something obvious, but... what else 
> is possible except boolean, number, string and nodeset/node?

XSLT 1.0 added a fifth data type, "result tree fragment", and defined how
result tree fragments were converted to strings.

And many XPath implementations allow calls out to Java (or similar
languages) to return wrapped Java objects, supporting implementation-defined
sets of operations often including conversion to string.

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