RE: Questions on sorting

[Kay Michael <Michael.Kay@xxxxxxx>]

> I'm a bit confused by the interaction of xsl:sort and the various
> axes.  I suppose basically my question is: does xsl:sort affect the
> ordering of nodes for the purpose of reference within the stylesheet,
> or just for the purpose of the output?

xsl:sort affects the order in which the nodes are processed. It does not
affect the position of the nodes on any axis, such as the following-siblings
axis.

>   <xsl:for-each select="//foo">
>     <xsl:sort/>
>     <xsl:value-of select="."/>:<xsl:for-each 
> select="preceding-sibling">

> And I obviously don't understand preceding-sibling

Indeed you don't. What you are doing here is to ask for all child elements
(of foo) with the name "preceding-sibling". What you presumably wanted was
all preceding sibling elements of the foo element. To get that, write
select="preceding-sibling::*"

Mike Kay


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list