building an XSLT string (variable) in a foreach loop

I don't believe you can use XSL variables to concatenate, because once a variable value is set, it can't be changed. Instead, I think you want something like:

<xsl:for-each select="catalog/cd">    <xsl:choose>        <xsl:when test="position() = 1">            <xsl:value-of select="country"/>        </xsl:when>        <xsl:otherwise>            ;<xsl:value-of select="country"/>        </xsl:otherwise>    </xsl:choose></xsl:for-each>

Does that make sense to you?

Edit: Just realized I may have misread how you were intending to use the variable. The snippet I posted above can be wrapped in a variable element for later use, if that's what you meant:

<xsl:variable name="VariableName">    <xsl:for-each select="catalog/cd">        <xsl:choose>            <xsl:when test="position() = 1">                <xsl:value-of select="country"/>            </xsl:when>            <xsl:otherwise>                ;<xsl:value-of select="country"/>            </xsl:otherwise>        </xsl:choose>    </xsl:for-each></xsl:variable>

If you can use XSLT 2.0 then either of the following would work:

Use the string-join() function:

<xsl:variable name="companies" select="string-join(catalog/cd/company, ';')" />

Use @separator with xsl:value-of:

<xsl:variable name="companies" >   <xsl:value-of select="catalog/cd/company" separator=";" /></xsl:variable>

Here is one simple, true XSLT solution:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output method="text"/> <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/> <xsl:template match="company">  <xsl:value-of select="."/>  <xsl:if test="following::company">;</xsl:if> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="text()"/></xsl:stylesheet>

When this transformation is applied on the provided XML document:

<catalog>    <cd>        <country>UK</country>        <company>CBS Records</company>    </cd>    <cd>        <country>USA</country>        <company>RCA</company>    </cd>    <cd>        <country>UK</country>        <company>Virgin records</company>    </cd></catalog>

the wanted, correct result (all companies concatenated together and delimited by a ;) is produced:

CBS Records;RCA;Virgin records