Thanks, Martin and Hermann.  That looks like it will do the trick.  I forgot
to state that we're using XSLT 2.

-----Original Message-----
From: Martin Honnen [mailto:Martin.Honnen@xxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2010 10:23 AM
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re:  Preceding siblings test

Hintz, David wrote:

> I'm still a novice at XSLT and am having a problem coming up with a test for
elements preceding a particular element, but only up to the first occurrence
of the same (or parent) element.  For example, in this XML:
>
> <list>
> <a/>
> <item>...</item>
> <b/><b/><a/>
> <item>...</item>
> <item>...</item>
> <a/><a/>
> <item>...</item>
> </list>
>
> Assume in this example, <a> and <b> elements can occur before each item (any
number of each).  When I start processing an <item>, how do I get a list of
just those nodes before the first preceding <item> or parent <list> element?

With XSLT 2.0 you can use the XPath 2.0 '>>' operator
   <xsl:template match="item">
     <xsl:variable name="preceding-item"
select="preceding-sibling::item[1]"/>
     <xsl:variable name="preceding-abs" select="preceding-sibling:a[.
&gt;&gt; $preceding-item] | preceding-sibling:b[. &gt;&gt;
$preceding-item]"/>
   </xsl:template>

It sounds however as if you might want to consider
   <xsl:for-each-group select="*" group-ending-with="item">
in a template matching the "list" element. That's also XSLT 2.0 however.




--

	Martin Honnen
	http://msmvps.com/blogs/martin_honnen/