XSLT 2.0 has no facility to do this either. Some processors have extension 
functions built in that do this, Saxon for instance has saxon:evaluate(). If 
you are using MSXML you can write an extension function in script, if using 
XML.NET then you can use a .NET language.
It also might be useful to see what you tried in EXSLT that failed.

-- 

Joe Fawcett (MVP - XML)

http://joe.fawcett.name

"Mycroft" <Mycroft@d...> wrote in message 
news:C00EE749-5633-46D5-A51F-64351B23028A@m......
>I need to pull XPath from strings obtained from the XML data source. A
> typical query might look like:
>
> XML:
> <library>
> <books>
> <book title="A" type="science fiction"/>
> <book title="B" type="fantasy"/>
> <book title="C" type="romance"/>
> <book title="D" type="science fiction"/>
> <book title="E" type="Christianity"/>
> </books>
> <librarian>
> <defaultXPath>//book[type="Christianity"]</defaultXPath>
> </librarian>
> </library>
>
> XSLT (works):
> <xsl:variable name="Books">
> <xsl:apply-templates select="//book[type="Christianity"]"/>
> </xsl:variable>
>
> XSLT (fails):
> <xsl:apply-templates select="//librarian/defaultXPath"/>
> <xsl:apply-templates select="{//librarian/defaultXPath}"/>
>
>
> The problem is that the apply-templates command process the string as a 
> data
> island rather than interpreting the string as an XPath query.
>
> I have tried using code from EXSLT but that has not worked and everything 
> I
> read suggests that XSLT 2.0 might have a method to perform this operation,
> but I find no examples.
>
> Any suggestions?
>