I see. So when I changed the ID values to 'a' and 'b' the only one that worked was the one with single quotes: 
"/language/$language/widget[\@ID='$id']"

[download]
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "a valid identifier cannot start with a digit" - what does 'identifier' refer to?

In reply to Re^8: language selection via libxml by tangent
in thread language selection via libxml by banzai

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