RE: Equivalence between XSL and XPath expression

> Err, correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't the 'preceding' 
> axis include the ancestors as well?
> 
> I would have guessed that the 'equivalent' would have been:
>      count(self::menu)+count(preceding::menu)

Guessing isn't a good way of discovering what the semantics of XPath are. A
better way is to read the spec:


the preceding axis contains all nodes in the same document as the context
node that are before the context node in document order, excluding any
ancestors and excluding attribute nodes and namespace nodes


Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/