You might like to look at the algorithm Saxon uses for determining relative
document order between two nodes in a structure such as JDOM that doesn't do
this natively. It basically walks up from both nodes (stepping each
alternately) to find a common ancestor, then finds the relative sibling
position of the nodes that are children of this common ancestor.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lyublinski, Leonid 
> [mailto:Leonid.Lyublinski@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 28 January 2005 16:40
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: RE:  Relative XPATH between 2 nodes
> 
> Right, I had to be more specific.
> 
> There is a defined XML document and XSLT to build.
> I need to built a template which takes 2 parameters - 2 
> single nodes or
> 2 xpath expression resulting in 1 and only 1 node each.
> This template supposed to create a XPATH expression, a short 
> cut between
> 2 given nodes.
> 
> >Do you want the shortest XPath expression, or the XPath expression
> whose evaluation touches fewest nodes?
> >   following-sibling::*[5]/child::*[2]
> >or
> >   following::*[29]
> 
> The first one it is.
> To my understanding the 1st (and longer) expression will be processed
> faster.
> I might be wrong though.
> 
> 
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