Thank you. Additional question:

-- Example --------------------------
<text xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="2.0">
x
<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>
</text>
-- /Example --------------------------

What irritates me is that in Oxygen the XPath 
  //e/preceding::node()[1]
highlights the blank space before <e>, while
  //e/preceding::node()[2]
highlights the d element. But when I run Saxon on the example with the
the test 
	<xsl:if test="ends-with(preceding::node()[1],'x')"> 
it fires a the e element and refers to the d element, not to the blank
space.

Obviously, this is due to the 
    <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>
directive in the XSL sheet. Can the XPath query control in the Oxygen
IDE be configured to behave likewise?

Thanks again for your fast response.
s.m.



> >     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>
> > 
> 


Am Montag, den 29.10.2007, 21:37 +0000 schrieb Michael Kay:
> 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?