RE: Getting max/min numbers out of nested structure

I figured it was easy but I didn't think it would be THAT easy -- thanks.

Michele

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Kay [mailto:mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, June 10, 2013 11:42 AM
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re:  Getting max/min numbers out of nested structure

What's wrong with

<xsl:for-each select="//a">
  <xsl:value-of select="min(.//box), max(.//box)"/> </xsl:for-each>

Michael Kay


On 10 Jun 2013, at 16:35, Michele R Combs wrote:

> Given this nested structure (hope it comes through legibly):
>
> <a>
>      <b>
>           <box>1</box>
>           <box>1</box>
>      </b>
>      <b>
>           <box>1</box>
>           <box>2</box>
>           <c>
>                <box>2</box>
>                <box>2</box>
>           </c>
>      </b>
> </a>
> <a>
>      <b>
>           <box>3</box>
>           <box>4</box>
>           <c>
>                <box>6</box>
>                <box>6</box>
>           </c>
>           <box>5</box>
>           <box>5</box>
>      </b>
>      <b>
>           <box>5</box>
>           <box>5</box>
>      </b>
> </a>
>
> What is the easiest way to find the max/min box numbers in each <a>?  That
is, for the first <a> I want "1-2" and for the second <a> I want "3-6."  FYI,
in the real data, rather than stopping at three nested levels (a, b, c) it can
potentially go up to 12 (!!).  Normally I would simply grab the value from the
first descendant and the value from the last descendant, but it turns out that
sometimes the numbers aren't in order within the document tree (as shown in
the second <a>) so that's not reliable enough.
>
> Thanks --
>
> Mich