• Chapter 1: Getting Started with Stylus Studio®
• Chapter 2: Editing and Querying XML
• Chapter 3: Converting Non-XML Files to XML
• Chapter 4: Working with XSLT
• Chapter 5: Creating XSLT Using the XSLT Mapper
• Chapter 6: Debugging Stylesheets
• Chapter 7: Defining XML Schemas
• Chapter 8: Defining Document Type Definitions
• Chapter 9: Writing XPath Expressions
  • About the XPath Processor
  • Using the XPath Query Editor
  • Sample Data for Examples and Practice
  • Getting Started with Queries
  • Specifying the Nodes to Evaluate
  • Handling Strings and Text
  • Specifying Boolean Expressions and Functions
  • Specifying Number Operations and Functions
  • Comparing Values
  • Finding a Particular Node
    • About Node Positions
    • Determining the Position Number of a Node
    • Positions in Relation to Parent Nodes
    • Finding Nodes Relative to the Last Node in a Set
    • Finding Multiple Nodes
    • Examples of Specifying Positions
    • Finding the First Node That Meets a Condition
    • Finding an Element with a Particular ID
    • Obtaining Particular Types of Nodes By Using Node Tests
  • Obtaining a Union
  • Obtaining Information About a Node or a Node Set
  • Using XPath Expressions in Stylesheets
  • Accessing Other Documents During Query Execution
  • XPath Quick Reference
• Chapter 10: Working with XQuery in Stylus Studio
• Chapter 11: Composing Web Service Calls
• Chapter 12: Working with WSDL Documents
• Chapter 13: Building XML Pipelines
• Chapter 14: Publishing XML Data
• Chapter 15: Integrating with Third-Party File Systems
• Chapter 16: Extending Stylus Studio
• Chapter 17: The Stylus Studio Java API
• Chapter 18: Stylus Studio GUI Reference

Home >Online Product Documentation >Table of Contents >Finding Nodes Relative to the Last Node in a Set

To obtain nodes relative to the last node in the set, use the position() and last() functions with arithmetic. For example, the following queries both obtain the last author element in the current context:

author [position() = last()] 
author [last()] 

The following queries both return the next-to-last author element:

author [position() = last() - 1] 
author [last() - 1] 

For information about position(), see Determining the Position Number of a Node. For information about last(), see Determining the Context Size.