Thanks for the reply but at present with this xsl 

using instant saxon 6.5.3

<xsl:stylesheet 
	xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" 
	version="1.0">
	
	<!-- select all text nodes -->
	<xsl:template
match="blah[not((preceding-sibling::*|.)='STOP')]">
			<xsl:call-template name="CheckTag">
				<xsl:with-param name="STR" select="."/>
			</xsl:call-template>
	</xsl:template>
	
	<!-- search through nodes only displaying nodes that
comply with the rules -->
	<xsl:template name="CheckTag">
	<xsl:param name="STR"/>
		<xsl:if test="$STR='TEXT'">
			<req_id>
				<xsl:value-of select="."/>
			</req_id>
		</xsl:if>
	</xsl:template>
	
	
	<!-- Change root element -->
			<xsl:template match="root">
				<item>
				<xsl:apply-templates/>
				</item>
	</xsl:template>
	
	
</xsl:stylesheet>

i get this xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><item>
         
                 <req_id>TEXT</req_id>
                 <req_id>TEXT</req_id>
                 <req_id>TEXT</req_id>
                 STOP
                 TEXT
                 TEXT
         
</item>

I would like....

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<item>
         
                 <req_id>TEXT</req_id>
                 <req_id>TEXT</req_id>
                 <req_id>TEXT</req_id>
</item>

any help appreciated....

On Thu, 2005-08-04 at 16:43 +0100, ADAM PATRICK wrote:
> <root>
>         <item>
>                 <blah>TEXT</blah>
>                 <blah>TEXT</blah>
>                 <blah>TEXT</blah>
>                 <blah>STOP</blah>
>                 <blah>TEXT</blah>
>                 <blah>TEXT</blah>
>         </item>
> </root>
> i want to apply a template to all <blah> nodes
before
> the text STOP appears after that I do not want to
> apply the template in the <blah> node.
> i believe the rough answer is to do with XPATH and
> setting the template match correctly using
> preceding-sibling
> but can't quite work it out...
> any help appreciated.

The following template matches the blah elements you
DO want to process
(xpath 2.0):

<xsl:template
match="blah[not((preceding-sibling::*|.)='STOP')]"/>

sdc