You are decribing the f:type() function of FXSL.

   http://fxsl.cvs.sourceforge.net/fxsl/fxsl-xslt2/f/func-type.xsl?revision=1.8&view=markup

-- 
Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev
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Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.
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To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk
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Never fight an inanimate object
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You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what
you're doing is work or play



On Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 9:09 AM, Justin Johansson <procode@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Can someone please say how to determine the item type of any item in an
> XPath 2 sequence, whether it be atomic or nodal, and especially in the case
> of atomic items if it is boolean, number or string.
>
> Taken as text (ie. characters) xsd can say if the text looks like boolean,
> number or string, but is this the same as the actual item type in the XDM
> (i.e. the internal vs external representation of a value).
>
> It seems difficult to determine if an (XPath) item which outputs as the
> sequence of characters "true" was actually an XDM boolean or string item.
>
> Thanks for the lists help.
>
> JJohansson