(this is a resend; my original message bounced, I think)
Problem: print a list of students, grouping the students by their
language and printing a blank line between each group. Number the blank
lines in addition to the lines with students' names.
So calling position() to get the number is insufficient, because
position() doesn't count the blank lines.
Mukul was commenting that this problem would be easier to solve if XSLT
supported something like variables. For example:
<xsl:for-each select="Student">
<xsl:if test="TOption != previous-sibling::Student[last()]/TOption">
<tr> <td> {counter} </td> <td/> <td/> </tr>
counter++;
</xsl:if>
<tr> <td> {counter} </td> <td> {Name} </td> <td> { Toption }
</td> </tr>
counter++;
</xsl:for-each>
This is what Jarno's code essentially does, but Jarno had to use
recursion to simulate the loop, which is [arguably] a bit cumbersome.
However, you can do something the loop above, if you replace the
variable "counter" with a formula, which is
the previous number of students + the previous number of groups
In XSLT version 2 this is simply:
count(preceding-sibling::*) +
count(distinct-values(preceding-sibling::*/TOption/text()))
And after the loop finishes, to compute the total number of lines
printed, you would do
count(Student) + count(distinct-values(Student/TOption/text()))
-------------
By the way, an alternative to a single loop is to write a nested loop
(for-each language / for-each student). This is what Americo's code
does, but his code is a bit complicated because he is programming in
XSLT V1, where there is no for-each-group operator
(http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt20/#d0e15262) . But in XSLT V2 we would say this:
<xsl:for-each-group select="Student" group-by="TOption">
<xsl:variable name="group-no" select="position()"/>
<xsl:for-each select="current-group()">
<tr>
<td> <xsl:value-of select="count(preceding-sibling::*) +
$group-no"/> </td>
<td> <xsl:value-of select="Name"/> </td>
<td> <xsl:value-of select="TOption"/> </td>
</tr>
</xsl:for-each>
<tr>
<td> <xsl:value-of
select="count(current-group()[last()]/preceding-sibling::*) + $group-no
+ 1"/> </td>
<td> </td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
</xsl:for-each-group>
Bill
XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list