I think it's:

match="foreign[@lang = (ancestor::*/@lang)[last()]]"

which is valid in both 1.0 and 2.0.

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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Syd Bauman [mailto:Syd_Bauman@xxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 14 July 2008 01:47
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  XPath to select based on attr = same attr of 
> an ancestor
> 
> The idea here is that I want a template that will match any 
> <foreign> element that has a lang= attribute with a value 
> that matches the lang= attribute value of said <foreign> 
> element's nearest ancestor that has a lang= attribute 
> specified. (So that I can delete said
> <foreign>.) I.e. in
> 
>    <div lang="en">
>      <p>Only <foreign lang="en">one</foreign> more!</p>
>      <p>Only <foreign lang="es">uno</foreign> more!</p>
>    </div>
> 
> the first <foreign> should be matched, and the second should not.
> Thus the above should become
> 
>    <div lang="en">
>      <p>Only one more!</p>
>      <p>Only <foreign lang="es">uno</foreign> more!</p>
>    </div>
> 
> I used the following XPath on the match= of an <xsl:template>:
>  foreign[@lang][ancestor::*[@lang]][1][ ./@lang = 
> ./ancestor::*[@lang][1]/@lang ] While my stylesheet seems to 
> work for simple cases, it fails for many cases, too. (Like 
> missing all but the 1st <foreign> in a <p>.)
> 
> In case it helps, I have made the requisite files available 
> via the web (see below), but it may be the case that sharp 
> eyes here can pick up on some detail I've messed up just by 
> looking at the XPath itself.
> And while I'd prefer to stick with XSLT 1 and thus XPath 1, 
> XSLT 2 and thus XPath 2 is an option.
> 
>  1) the story:
>     http://bauman.zapto.org/~syd/temp/rrfq/story.txt
>  2) the XSLT 1.0 stylesheet itself
>     
> http://bauman.zapto.org/~syd/temp/rrfq/remove_redundant_foreig
n_elements.xslt
>  3) a test input XML file
>     
> http://bauman.zapto.org/~syd/temp/rrfq/test_remove_redundant_f
oreign_input.xml
>  4) the desired output
>     
> http://bauman.zapto.org/~syd/temp/rrfq/test_remove_redundant_f
oreign_desired.xml
>  5) the actual output
>     
> http://bauman.zapto.org/~syd/temp/rrfq/test_remove_redundant_f
oreign_output.xml