Since passing the element
  as a parameter and then using '$element[@name]' did
  not work 

If you passed an element as the parameter then $element[@name] would
work. If it didn't work then presumably you did not do that, perhaps you
passed a string with an element name instead? 'foo'[@name] is not valid
Xpath.

David

-- 
http://www.dcarlisle.demon.co.uk/matthew

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