Re: How to find distinct nodes by value?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:template match="/">
 <output>
   <xsl:for-each select="distinct-values(//myElement)">
     <myElement><xsl:value-of select="." /></myElement>
   </xsl:for-each>
 </output>
</xsl:template>

I would like to retrieve only the distinct nodes (by value) from a
"//myElement"-like  expression; <myElement> is either empty or contains
only text.

From this document

<a>
   <myElement>aaa</myElement>
   <b>
      <myElement>aaa</myElement>
      <myElement>xyz</myElement>
      <myElement>efg</myElement>
   </b>
   <c>
      <d>
          <myElement>khl</myElement>
          <myElement>xyz</myElement>
      </d>
   </c>
</a>

the result should be (the order doesn't matter)

<myElement>aaa</myElement>
<myElement>xyz</myElement>
<myElement>efg</myElement>
<myElement>khl</myElement>

In early XPath "Working Draft"s there seems to have been a function
called "distinct-nodes()" which should have done something similar but
it used the identity of the nodes.
This document still shows the function
http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-xpath-functions-20030502/#func-distinct-nodes
and it was removed in
http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-xpath-functions-20031112/

A replacement for this function found in
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-xpath-functions-20050404/#func-distinct-nodes-stable

basically tells that

//myElement[empty(subsequence(//myElement, 1, position()-1) intersect .)]

should work to select distinct nodes (by identity).

But I haven't been able to find a solution for distinct nodes by value.

Any suggestions?

--
Regards,
Mukul Gandhi