templates and iterating attributes from xpath expression

I doubt it can be done but ..........

I ve been trying to see if ASSIGN might return  a list of current attributes 
(or ideally a specific ndexed attribute)

Having hunted around I came across

http://www.velocityreviews.com/forums/t167301-seek-xpath-expression-where-an-attribute-name-is-a-regular-expression.html

which seems to suggest  that

      <assign var="?findattributenames" 
expr="contains(local-name(@*),'gender')"/>

should select the attribute 'gender'  (using people.xml). this returns 
false.

Is this correct?