I want to recursively copy input to output, with some control/filtering. So I tried to write

<xsl:template match=".">
<xsl:variable name="nm" select="name()"/>
[<xsl:element name="{$nm}">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:element>]
</xsl:template>

It has problems with $nm, and it fires in the wrong places. Does anyone know how this should be done? I think it would be a good general example as to how the mysterious template/match/element mechanism really works.

(Of course we would then need to add attribute processing.)

match="." is not a valid XSLT match pattern.

The usual identity template is

<xsl:template match="*">
  <xsl:copy>
     <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/>
     <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

If you also want to apply templates to attribute nodes you can use the one in the XSLT spec:

<xsl:template match="node()|@*">
  <xsl:copy>
     <xsl:apply-templates select="node|@*"/>
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference