Hi, Duane,

Try //item[label = 'subTitle']/preceding-sibling::item[1]

In natural language, that expression finds the item element immediately 
preceding the item element whose label element has a value of 'subtitle'. 
(Sometimes it helps to express things in natural language to see if that's 
what you meant.)

Try not to use //, by the way. It's a very expensive expression, as it 
walks down every path in the document. /root/item would be much better. Of 
course, the difference is negligible in this little sample, but it makes a 
whopping big difference in big documents.

Jay Bryant
Bryant Communication Services
(presently consulting at Synergistic Solution Technologies)




Duane Gran <duane.gran@xxxxxxxxx> 
01/03/2006 12:34 PM
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Subject
 trouble with preceding axis






I'm having some trouble using the preceding axis in XPath and would 
be much obliged if someone could steer me in the right direction.  I 
have the following document:

<root>
   <item order="3">
     <label>Title</label>
   </item>
   <item order="4">
     <label>subTitle</label>
   </item>
</root>

I have the following XPath to select the second item, based on the 
value of its label child:

   //item[label = 'subTitle']

Now I want to modify this so that I refer to the preceding item 
element, the first one in the list.  I tried the following without 
success (it returns the second item element):

   //preceding::item[label = 'subTitle']

Suggestions are most welcome on this.

Duane