XSL recursive sort

Question

I am facing a problem where I need to sort elements, depending on their value, which contains a numbers, separated by periods. I need to sort elements depending on the value

Answer 1

It's not pretty but you can use the xalan:nodeset function to "pre-process" the numbers into a nodeset with an easily sortable expression as described by Jim.

This example works for me with Xalan 2.5.1:

I personally think writing an extension function would be preferable, but I know that's it's not always an option.