Re: References in XPath that can be represented by astringandstill can be garbage collected

> Then isn't it simpler to introduce a mutable reference and 
> allow statefull logic like in this pseudo code:

Anything that introduces stateful logic will complicate the semantics of the
language dramatically. It basically means that you have to start defining
rules for the order of evaluation of expressions - all expressions.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/