Re: Difficulty over understanding preceding-sibling

On 9/3/05, Joe Fawcett <joefawcett@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Can anyone explain why the first item being passed to the template has any
> preceding-sibling?
> XML:
> <root>
>  <item id="1" />
>  <item id="2" />
>  <item id="3" />
>  <item id="4" />
>  <item id="5" />
>  <item id="6" />
>  <item id="7" />
>  <item id="8" />
>  <item id="9" />
>  <item id="10" />
> </root>
>
> XSLT:
> <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
>  <xsl:param name="groupSize" select="3" />
>  <xsl:template match="/">
>    <new>
>      <xsl:call-template name="groupItems">
>        <xsl:with-param name="items" select="root/item" />
>      </xsl:call-template>
>    </new>
>  </xsl:template>
>
>  <xsl:template name="groupItems">
>    <xsl:param name="items" />
>    <xsl:variable name="itemCount" select="count($items)" />
>    <xsl:if test="$itemCount > 0">
>      <group>
>        <xsl:for-each select="$items">
>          <xsl:if test="position() <= $groupSize">
>            <newItem id="{@id}">
>              <xsl:if test="position() = 1">
>                <xsl:attribute name="preceding-sibling-count">
>                  <xsl:value-of select="count(preceding-sibling::item)" />
>                </xsl:attribute>
>              </xsl:if>
>            </newItem>
>          </xsl:if>
>        </xsl:for-each>
>      </group>
>      <xsl:call-template name="groupItems">
>        <xsl:with-param name="items" select="$items[position() >
$groupSize]"
> />
>      </xsl:call-template>
>    </xsl:if>
>  </xsl:template>
> </xsl:stylesheet>
>
> Result (msxml version 4):
> <new>
>  <group itemCount="10">
>  <newItem id="1" preceding-sibling-count="0"/>
>  <newItem id="2"/>
>  <newItem id="3"/>
>  </group>
>  <group itemCount="7">
>  <newItem id="4" preceding-sibling-count="3"/>
>  <newItem id="5"/>
>  <newItem id="6"/>
>  </group>
>  <group itemCount="4">
>  <newItem id="7" preceding-sibling-count="6"/>
>  <newItem id="8"/>
>  <newItem id="9"/>
>  </group>
>  <group itemCount="1">
>  <newItem id="10" preceding-sibling-count="9"/>
>  </group>
> </new>
>
> Why doesn't the preceding-sibling-count show zero, or am I just up too
late?


Because this is exactly the number of preceding siblings of the current node.

The "preceding-sibling" axis' scope is the current document, not a
dynamically defined node-list.

Most probably you want something else -- not the count of preceding siblings?

Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev