An outline design for XSLT 2.0: write a recursive template that does

<xsl:for-each-group select="$in" group-by="tokenize(.,'/')[$n]">

Initially call this with $in := the sequence of item elements, $n := 1. 

On subsequent calls, $in := current-group(), $n := $n+1.

for-each-group does nothing if the population is empty, so the recursion
will terminate naturally.

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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: James Fuller [mailto:jim.fuller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 11 January 2007 08:53
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  most efficient flat file listing to hierarchical
> 
> Hello All,
> 
> Can anyone propose a pure xslt (1 or 2) solution to 
> transforming the following flat xml structure of directory 
> paths into a hierarchical
> (nested) xml.
> 
> <?xml version='1.0'?>
> <listing>
>     <item>cn/test.xml</item>
>     <item>en</item>
>     <item>en/test.html</item>
>     <item>en/test1.html</item>
>     <item>en/resource</item>
>     <item>en/resource/style</item>   
>     <item>en/resource/style/test.css</item>
>     <item>favicon.ico</item>
>     <item>cn</item>
> </listing>
> 
>     to
> 
> 
> <dir>
> <file name="favicon.ico"/>
> <dir name="cn">
>     <file name="test.xml"/>
> </dir>
> <dir name="en">
>     <file name="test.html"/>
>     <file name="test1.html"/>
>     <dir name="resource">
>         <dir name="style">
>               <file name="test.css"/>
>         </dir>
>     </dir>
> </dir>
> </dir>
> 
> thx in advance.
> 
> cheers, Jim Fuller