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[xsl] Determine position in node sequence based on criteria

2010-06-29 18:13:56
I'm have a problem trying to come up with an XPath expression that will 
determine the position of a node in a node sequence (terminology?) based on 
some criteria. I have some XML that looks like:

<r>
 <f>
  <s>...</s>
  <s>...</s>
  <s>...</s>
 </f>
</r>

I have a template rule which is at one of the <s> nodes, e.g.:

<xsl:template match="s[(_at_)c = 'c']" />

inside that template I'm trying to figure out which other <s> ends in a 
parenthical expression if and only if an attribute has a certain value. So I 
started out with this:

<xsl:template match="s[(_at_)c = 'c']">
  <xsl:variable name="re" as="xsd:string" select="'(\([^)]+\))\s*$'" />
  <xsl:variable name="pos" as="xsd:integer*">
    <xsl:for-each select="../s">
      <xsl:if test="matches(@c, '^[ab]$') and matches(., $re)">
        <xsl:sequence select="position()" />
      </xsl:if>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </xsl:variable>
</xsl:template>

Great this does exactly what I want, but it seems to me that I should be able 
to construct an XPath expression and use a select attribute on the $pos 
variable. So given the XML:

<r>
  <f>
    <s c="a">123</s>
    <s c="b">456 (abc)</s>
    <s c="c" />
  </f>
</r>

I should be able to construct an equivalent XPath expression that would give me 
a position of 2. My first attempt was:

../s[matches(@c, '^[ab]$') and matches(., $re)]/position()

obviously wrong since it will always return 1, given the above XML, e.g., I 
need the position() in ../s not the position() of the resulting nodeset from 
the match criteria. So right now I'm stumpped out of ideas in how to construct 
the XPath to give me the position. Anybody have any suggestions to offer...

Thanks, Andy.


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