Hi all,

XSL Novice

In the source XML I have a Display_Count node that is the
number of lines to display in the output HTML generated by
my XSL.

So for example, if <Display_Count>10</Display_Count> I get 10
lines, if <Display_Count>5</Display_Count> I get 5.

I set a variable loop_num to be used as a loop counter later
in the XSL as follows:

<xsl:variable name="loop_num" select="//Display_Count"/> 

This works fine.

Now I want to handle the case where the Display_Count node
does not exist in the XML input.  That is, I want to set a 
default value (say, of 3) for loop_num in that case.

I ran into the problem where a variable cannot be reassigned
and its definition cannot be duplicated in the current scope.

So something like this will not work:

<xsl:choose>
  <xsl:when test="not(//Display_Count)">
    <xsl:variable name="loop_num" select="1"/>  
  </xsl:when>
  <xsl:otherwise>
    <xsl:variable name="loop_num" select="//Display_Count"/>  
  </xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>

How can I set the varable loop_num to some default constant
value if the Display_Count node does not exist or to the value
of the Display_Count node if it does exist?

Thanks
kpg