Setting a value in a variable on if conditions using XSL
<p>I have a basic   condition that checks if a variable is empty and if it is set the variable to a specific value like so.</p>

<pre><code>&lt;xsl:variable name="PIC" select="avatar"/&gt;

&lt;xsl:choose&gt;
  &lt;xsl:when test="avatar !=''"&gt;
    &lt;xsl:variable name="PIC" select="avatar"/&gt;
  &lt;/xsl:when&gt;
  &lt;xsl:otherwise&gt;
    &lt;xsl:variable name="PIC" select="'placeholder.jpg'"/&gt;
  &lt;/xsl:otherwise&gt;
&lt;/xsl:choose&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>Basically var PIC is set to whatever <code>avatar</code> returns. Then a test is carried to check if if it's not empty and assigned to var <code>PIC</code> and if it is empty a value <code>placeholder.jpg</code> is added to var <code>PIC</code> instead.</p>

<p>Now for some reason I keep getting the following warning </p>

<p><code>A variable with no following sibling instructions has no effect</code></p>

<p>Any ideas on what I am doing wrong here?</p>