>>> So what if A/@* is not a faithful representation. Should I present the
>>> answers it gives me as a universal truth.
>>
>> No, it's the truth about the transformation process from one to the other.
>>
>
> Agreed. So at essence this thread is about the nuance between
> information derived from a representation and information derivable
> from the real thing.

You are making this waaay more complicated than it is.

1) A node list is created
2) calling position() on a node returns the position of that node in that list
3) calling last() on a node returns the position of the last node in
that list (or in other words the size of the list)

Thats all there is to it for those functions...


-- 
Andrew Welch
http://andrewjwelch.com