Re: testing for existence of an element - multiple var

> I realise I am missing the point somewhere here but I cannot get my head 
> round it.

the point is that $thisone contains a string not a fragment of an XPath
expression. in C or java, if the variable x contained the string "1 + 2"
people do not expect to be able to use this in the middle of an
expression like
y = x + 3
and have this evaluate to y being 6.
But for some reason XPath users (many of them, not just you:-) expect 
to put a string in $thisone and use this in the middle of an expression
exactly analogous to the above.
 $doc1//CommonSoFar/$thisone
note here $doc1 is OK but it is not standing for the "expression" that
was used to set the variable, it is standing for its value, which will
be a node set, and the infix  // operator is taking that value as its
first argument. so if $thisone is "elemname" the above is
 $doc1//CommonSoFar/"elemname" 
and a syntax error.

anyway that's why it doesn't work, but in your case, where you just have
an element name not a more complicated expression, there's an easy fix
(which is probably in the faq for this list)

$doc1//CommonSoFar/*[name()=$thisone]

David

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