[xsl] Grouping problem?

["Shawn O. McKenzie" <smckenzie@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

First, I'd like to thank Ken Hollman for all the help he has given me. 
He has saved this list much wasted bandwidth in answering my questions.

Here is a problem I am having that I think may be a grouping problem. 
Imagine I have nested lists of items within a document, something like this:

<section name="first">
  <nestlist name="level_1">
      <item name="apple"/>
      <item name="orange"/>
      <item name="truck"/>
      <item name="foo"/>
      <nestlist name="level_2">
        <item name="orange"/>
        <item name="bar"/>
        <item name="truck"/>
        <nestlist name="level_3">
          <item name="orange"/>
          <item name="foo"/>
          <item name="fnord"/>
          <item name="truck"/>
          <nestlist name="level_4">
            <item name="foobar"/>
            <item name="apple"/>
            <item name="bar"/>
       </nestlist>
     </nestlist>
   </nestlist>
 </nestlist>
</section>

I would like to be able to select the first instance of every item in 
the above with a specific name attribute, without having prior knowledge 
of what that name might be. For example, I would like to be able to 
create a select statement that would process item elements along these 
lines:

   - apple orange truck and foo in the level_1 nestlist
   - bar in the level_2 nestlist
   - fnord in level_3
   - foobar in level_4

I have very large lists like this, and need to perform operations on the 
first occurance of a unique name.

I have been attempting it with something like:

<xsl:for-each select="section">
  <xsl:variable name="sectname" select="$name"/>
  <xsl:for-each select="//nestlist/item">
    <xsl:variable name="name" select="@name"/>
      <xsl:for-each select="(/section//nestlist/item[@name=$name])[1]">
        <!--Do something here-->
      </xsl:for-each>
  +</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:for-each>

But, it seems, this is not valid. How would I go about this?



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