> I believe that in its most general form this problem doesn't have a
> pure XPath 1.0 solution (though it is easy if we are allowed to use
> XSLT 1.0).
>
> We either need the feature of range variables, or the feature of being
> able to specify a function call as the last location step in a path
> expression.
>

I came to the same conclusion, though Ibm always reluctant to say that
somethingbs impossible. Essentially you need to examine the namespace nodes
to map the prefix to a URI, and that involves a join, and joins are restricted
in XPath 1.0 by the absence of range variables - XPath 1.0 is not
brelationally completeb in Coddbs sense.

Michael Kay
Saxonica