In 9.11, circular definitions, we have several examples of circularities involving patterns:

Example: Circularity involving Variables and Templates

<xsl:variable name="x">
  <xsl:apply-templates select="//param[1]"/>
</xsl:variable>

<xsl:template match="param[$x]">1</xsl:template>

Example: Circularity involving Variables and Keys

<xsl:variable name="x" select="my:f(10, /)"/>

<xsl:function name="my:f">
  <xsl:param name="arg1"/>
  <xsl:param name="top"/>
  <xsl:sequence select="key('k', $arg1, $top)"/>
</xsl:function>

<xsl:key name="k" match="item[@code=$x]" use="@desc"/>

But we say in 5.6.4 that a dynamic error in evaluating a pattern does not cause the transformation to fail, it causes the pattern to not match. This suggests that these two examples should no longer be errors.

Alternatively we could say that the rule about not reporting errors in patterns does not apply to circularity errors.

Affects test case error-code-195.