RE: How do you select all unique first-position charac

I'm not sure if this what your going for, but the template below can either
retrieve you a text list (see comments) or a nodelist containing the nodes
of the all unique first letters where the assumption is which person node it
is doesn't matter.

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="/">
   <report-data>
      <xsl:variable name="slist">
         <xsl:for-each select="//person">
            <xsl:sort data-type="text" order="ascending"
                          case-order="upper-first" select="@name"/>
            <xsl:choose>
               <xsl:when test="position()=1">
                  <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
                  <!--<xsl:value-of select="substring(@name,1,1)"/>-->
               </xsl:when>
               <xsl:when test="position() &lt; last()">
                  <xsl:if test="substring(@name,1,1)
                                !=
                                substring(preceding-sibling::*[1]/@name,1,1)
                             and
                             substring(@name,1,1)
                             !=
                             substring(following-sibling::*[1]/@name,1,1)">
                     <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
                     <!--<xsl:value-of select="substring(@name,1,1)"/>-->
                  </xsl:if>
               </xsl:when>
               <xsl:otherwise>
                  <xsl:if test="substring(@name,1,1)
                                     !=
 
substring(preceding-sibling::*[1]/@name,1,1)">
                     <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
                     <!--<xsl:value-of select="substring(@name,1,1)"/>-->
                  </xsl:if>
               </xsl:otherwise>
            </xsl:choose>
         </xsl:for-each>
      </xsl:variable>
      <xsl:copy-of select="$slist"/>
   </report-data>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

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