A variable is a name that may be bound to a value. The value to which a variable is bound (the value of the variable) can be an object of any of the types that can be returned by expressions. There are two elements that can be used to bind variables: xsl:variable and xsl:param. The difference is that the value specified on the xsl:param variable is only a default value for the binding; when the template or stylesheet within which the xsl:param element occurs is invoked, parameters may be passed that are used in place of the default values. Both xsl:variable and xsl:param have a required name attribute, which specifies the name of the variable. The value of the name attribute is a QName, which is expanded as described in [2.4 Qualified Names]. For any use of these variable-binding elements, there is a region of the stylesheet tree within which the binding is visible; within this region any binding of the variable that was visible on the variable-binding element itself is hidden. Thus, only the innermost binding of a variable is visible. The set of variable bindings in scope for an expression consists of those bindings that are visible at the point in the stylesheet where the expression occurs.