You should pass the variable as the first parameter w/o quotes.

XMLTOCURSOR(allo,"out_cursor")

>I am trying to put pass a small cursor through a variable. To do so, I am trying to do a cursortoxml of the cursor into a variable and a xmltocursor from this variable to retrieve my cursor.
>It doesn't work:
>
>CURSORTOXML("in_cursor","allo",1,0,0,"1","","")
>XMLTOCURSOR("allo","out_cursor",0)
>
>The cursor only contains characters and numeric fields.
>
>Any suggestion
>Thanks
>ERic