Sebastian,

Thanks for your help, the problem with that is that this expression came
from some Java code which goes on to do some advanced fiddling with the
nodes, so I can't use a second level test.

Ta,

Nick

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sebastian Rahtz
> [mailto:sebastian.rahtz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: 03 April 2001 12:59
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re:  Ridiculous XPath expression, can I reduce it?
> 
> 
> Nick Vincent writes:
>  > I found this XPath expression lurking in some code, and 
> I'm thinking this
>  > *may well* not be the most efficient way of performing 
> this task, which
>  > basically finds all the elements that exist below any 
> given <input.form> tag
>  > but not below an <input.link> tag.
>  > 
>  > Here is the horror:
>  > 
>  > .//input.hidden[count(ancestor::input.form[not(@done)])=1 and
>  > not(@form.prefix) and not(ancestor::input.link)] | 
> 
> ...
> 
> using "starts-with(name(.),'input.')" might reduce it somewhat
> 
> personally, I'd let all the elements get processed, but add a
> 
>  <xsl:if test="not(ancester::input.link)">
> ...
>  </xsl:if>
> 
> condition in the template
> 
> 
> Sebastian Rahtz
> 
> 
>  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
> 

 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list