Re: [xsl] ancestor::* and for-each

[David Carlisle <davidc@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 28/07/2010 17:11, Wolfgang Laun wrote:
> I use ancestor-or-self::* to obtain the node sequence from some node
> to the document root.
> The outermost/top element of the document isn't interesting, so I add
> a predicate, and I find that this works:
>     [position() != last()]
> Apparently, the sequence goes from leaf to root, which is the closing
> tag order, as it should be.

The sequence returned by a path expression is always in document order so
(ancestor-or-self::*)[position()!=1]

would return the elements you want.

However the predicates that appear within a step are not filtering the 
entire sequence returned they are a separate syntactic construct, and 
they number in the direction of the axis used. which is backwards for 
ancestor-or-self so, as you observe

ancestor-or-self::*[position() != last()]

selects the same elements.


[] in a step is a predicate
http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath20/#id-predicates

[] applied to a sequence is a filter
http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath20/#id-filter-expr

David

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