i did this using msxsl nodeset to process fragments

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
 xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt">
<xsl:template match="a">
<xsl:variable name="List">
	<xsl:call-template name="SPLITTEMPLATE">
                <!-- Assume your template simply splits the original <a>Tom  
Dick  harry</a> tag and returns a resulting tree fragment 
<a>Tom</a><a>Dick>/a> etc-->
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable select="//b" name="b"/>
<xsl:for-each select="msxsl:node-set($List)/a">
	<a>
	<xsl:attribute name="b">
		<xsl:value-of select="$b"/>
	</xsl:attribute>
	</a><xsl:value-of select="."/>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:stylesheet>

"wooks" wrote:

> have 
> 
> <a>tom
>    dick
>    harry
>    peter</a>
> <b>typeforA</b>
> 
> I want 
> <a b="typeforA>tom</a> 
> <a b="typeforA>dick</a> 
> <a b="typeforA>harry</a> 
> <a b="typeforA>peter</a> 
> 
> I have a generic split routine that works but to get the output I want
> b has to be an attribute of a before the split routine runs. The split
> routine will then add b as an attribute to each A it creates.
> 
> Obviously I could do this easily in a 2 step transform -
> 
> 1. transform b from an element to an attribute of A.
> 2. Run the split.
> 
> But I want to do it in one transform. How?
>