XSLT Wrapping text with multiple tags - xslt-2.0

Question

I have this span element with a class of autbib-pc-bold-italic
<span class="autbib-pc-bold-italic">autbib</span>
I want to create element tags base on the #class attribute value:
My output should be:
<autbib><pc><bold><italic>autbib</italic></bold></pc></autbib>
Here is my xsl templates:
<xsl:template match="span[contains(#class,'autbib')]">
<xsl:call-template name="pbib.loop">
<xsl:with-param name="count" select="count(tokenize(#class, '-'))"/>
<xsl:with-param name="class" select="tokenize(#class, '-')"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template name="pbib.loop">
<xsl:param name="index" select="1" />
<xsl:param name="count" select="count(tokenize(#class, '-')) + 1"/>
<xsl:param name="class" select="tokenize(#class, '-')"/>
<xsl:element name="{$class[1]}">
<xsl:if test="not($index = $count)">
<xsl:element name="{$class[$index]}">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:element>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:element>
<xsl:if test="not($index = $count)">
<xsl:call-template name="pbib.loop">
<xsl:with-param name="index" select="$index + 1" />
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:template>
And have this output which is wrong:
<autbib>
<pc>autbib</pc>
<bold>autbib</bold>
<italic>autbib</italic>
</autbib>
I need to have this output:
<autbib>
<pc>
<bold>
<italic>autbib</italic>
</bold>
</pc>
</autbib>
My problem is that I'm not sure where I should place xsl:apply-template so that tags wrap with each other.

Answer 1

Here is my suggestion:
<xsl:stylesheet
version="2.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
exclude-result-prefixes="xs">
<xsl:output indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="span[contains(#class,'autbib')]">
<xsl:param name="classes" select="tokenize(#class, '-')"/>
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="not($classes[1])">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:element name="{$classes[1]}">
<xsl:apply-templates select=".">
<xsl:with-param name="classes" select="$classes[position() gt 1]"/>
</xsl:apply-templates>
</xsl:element>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
With Saxon 9.4 that transforms the input
<span class="autbib-pc-bold-italic">autbib</span>
into the result
<autbib>
<pc>
<bold>
<italic>autbib</italic>
</bold>
</pc>
</autbib>