Re: Re: quick [but difficult] Xpath Question

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Subject: Re: Re: quick [but difficult] Xpath Question
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2002 16:34:43 -0400

Juan,

Try (//XX)[1]

And hope that your processor is optimized to stop after it gets the first one rather than traversing the entire tree.

NB, this is not the same as //XX[1], which translates as

/descendant-or-self::node()/child::XX[1]

where the predicate operates only on the second step (the child step), so you get all XX elements that are the first XX child of their parents -- not what you want.

Grouping it as

(/descendant-or-self::node()/child::XX)[1]

(or using the abbreviated form as above), solves that particular problem.

If you have namespace-qualified elements around and you want any namespace but local-name 'XX' you'll have to do

(//*[local-name()='XX'])[1]

Good luck,
Wendell

At 04:17 PM 8/23/2002, you wrote:

Hello:

I need an XPath statement which will return the first node found in the
document, where the element's local-name() = 'XX'. The node can be anywhere
in the source tree. I've tried all sorts of different statements but they
either result too many records [ I just need the fist "hit"] or no records
at all.

I only need the first node, not all the nodes. and the name of the element
is only known at runtime. This Xpath will be inside an XSLT file which acts
as a "find command", displaying the first node found in the document.

Thanks in advance

XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list

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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list

Current Thread
Re: quick [but difficult] Xpath Question Juan Estevan Madrigal - Fri, 23 Aug 2002 16:17:11 -0400 (EDT) Robert Koberg - Fri, 23 Aug 2002 16:34:59 -0400 (EDT) Thomas B. Passin - Fri, 23 Aug 2002 16:35:18 -0400 (EDT) Wendell Piez - Fri, 23 Aug 2002 16:38:14 -0400 (EDT) <= Wendell Piez - Fri, 23 Aug 2002 16:39:30 -0400 (EDT)

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