Replace

preceding-sibling::*[1]/text()[last()]

with

preceding-sibling::node()[1]

If the preceding sibling is an element node, you'll get its string value
automatically, you don't need to get it's text node children explicitly.

There's also an ends-with() function in 2.0 which might be clearer than
regular expressions for such a simple job.

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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sascha Mantscheff [mailto:922492@xxxxxx] 
> Sent: 29 October 2007 21:28
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  How can I test the last preceding text character?
> 
> How do I test if the very last character of any preceding 
> text - be it in a parent or a sibling - has a certain value?
> Example:
> 
> <a>
>     This is parent text a not ending with an x.
>     <d>This ends with an x</d>
>     <e>This should issue a message.</e>
>     This is parent text ending with an x </a>
> 
> Now I want to know for each child element is if it is 
> preceded by an "x".
> I can check the sibling with
> 
> <xsl:if test="matches(preceding-sibling::*[1]/text()[last()],'x\$') ">
>     <xsl:message>
>         Element <xsl:value-of select="name()"/> is preceded by an x.
>     </xsl:message>
> </xsl:if>
> 
> But I cannot test the surrounding parent content with the 
> same model because the parent text may surround the child text.
> 
> What's the way to do it?