That bugged me too, although it was such a fun article I didn't want to complain. :-) What he really means is that his first snippet is the identity function.

That bugged me too, although it was such a fun article I didn't want to complain. :-) What he really means is that his first snippet is the identity function. Like x*1=x or x+0=x. Whatever it gets, it passes along unmodified. I think it's actually kind of nice that he started with that. Sometimes it is not easy to figure out how to do, for instance with XLST.....