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

[Martin Honnen <Martin.Honnen@xxxxxx>]

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.
>
> Then, I iterate over the sequence, and now the nodes are processed
> from root to leaf, which is strange.

It has nothing to do with iteration/for-each I think, XPath 2.0 when 
defining a step in a path expression that returns a sequence of nodes 
says the following:
  "If every evaluation of E2 returns a (possibly empty) sequence of 
nodes, these sequences are combined, and duplicate nodes are eliminated 
based on node identity. The resulting node sequence is returned in 
document order."

Thus if you have
  E1/ancestor::*
ancestor::* returns a sequence of nodes but for the result of the 
expression duplicates are eliminated and nodes are ordered in document 
order.






--

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