The result of a path expression (an expression involving "/") is always in
document order.

I'm not sure exactly what you want, but you might be able to get it by
replacing

A/B

with
 
for $a in A return $a/B

which doesn't sort into document order.

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


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kenneth Stephen [mailto:marvin.the.cynical.robot@xxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 27 November 2005 01:43
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  Node ordering question with preceding axis
> 
> Hi,
> 
>     I have the following testcase:
> 
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
> <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
>         version="2.0">
> 
>         <xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="yes" />
> 
>         <xsl:variable name="forest">
>                 <tree>One</tree>
>                 <tree>Two</tree>
>                 <tree><tree>Three</tree></tree>
>                 <tree><tree>Four</tree><tree>Five</tree></tree>
>                
> <tree><tree>Six</tree><tree>Seven</tree><tree>Eight</tree></tree>
>         </xsl:variable>
> 
>         <xsl:template match="/">
> 
>                 <xsl:value-of select="$forest//tree[text() =
> 'Eight']/preceding::*" />
>         </xsl:template>
> 
> </xsl:stylesheet>
> 
>     When run, this code produces:
> 
> One Two Three Three FourFive Four Five Six Seven
> 
>     I'm not entirely clear about the expected behaviour of preceding
> axis with temporary trees, but I was expecting that the for the last
> "forest" of nodes, the node ordering would be "Seven" followed by
> "Six"  since preceding is a reverse axis. What am I missing?
> 
> Thanks,
> Kenneth