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?

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/