Re: Grouping problem?

Cheers,
Wendell

First, I'd like to thank Ken Hollman for all the help he has given me. He has saved this list much wasted bandwidth in answering my questions.

Here is a problem I am having that I think may be a grouping problem. Imagine I have nested lists of items within a document, something like this:

<section name="first">
  <nestlist name="level_1">
      <item name="apple"/>
      <item name="orange"/>
      <item name="truck"/>
      <item name="foo"/>
      <nestlist name="level_2">
        <item name="orange"/>
        <item name="bar"/>
        <item name="truck"/>
        <nestlist name="level_3">
          <item name="orange"/>
          <item name="foo"/>
          <item name="fnord"/>
          <item name="truck"/>
          <nestlist name="level_4">
            <item name="foobar"/>
            <item name="apple"/>
            <item name="bar"/>
       </nestlist>
     </nestlist>
   </nestlist>
 </nestlist>
</section>

I would like to be able to select the first instance of every item in the above with a specific name attribute, without having prior knowledge of what that name might be. For example, I would like to be able to create a select statement that would process item elements along these lines:

   - apple orange truck and foo in the level_1 nestlist
   - bar in the level_2 nestlist
   - fnord in level_3
   - foobar in level_4

I have very large lists like this, and need to perform operations on the first occurance of a unique name.

I have been attempting it with something like:

<xsl:for-each select="section">
  <xsl:variable name="sectname" select="$name"/>
  <xsl:for-each select="//nestlist/item">
    <xsl:variable name="name" select="@name"/>
      <xsl:for-each select="(/section//nestlist/item[@name=$name])[1]">
        <!--Do something here-->
      </xsl:for-each>
  +</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:for-each>

But, it seems, this is not valid. How would I go about this?

======================================================================
Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street                    Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207                                          Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD  20850                                 Fax: 301/315-8285
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