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Re: Need XPath 2.0 expression which returns a non-empt

Subject: Re: Need XPath 2.0 expression which returns a non-empty paragraph element that is preceded by a long uninterrupted series of empty paragraph elements
From: "Kevin Brown kevin.brown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 20:05:56 -0000
Re:  Need XPath 2.0 expression which returns a non-empt
May need further explanation ... like why is not just always only the last()
one?
Kevin

-----Original Message-----
From: Costello, Roger L. costello@xxxxxxxxx
[mailto:xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Monday, November 25, 2019 11:39 AM
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject:  Need XPath 2.0 expression which returns a non-empty paragraph
element that is preceded by a long uninterrupted series of empty paragraph
elements

Hi Folks,

I want to know if an XHTML document contains a non-empty paragraph (p)
element that is preceded by a long, uninterrupted series of paragraph
elements, each containing just a non-blocking space character (decimal 160).
Let's assume that "long" means 20. For example, here is an excerpt of an
XHTML document:

<body>
    <p>Text at top</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>Text at bottom</p>
</body>

The query should return this:

<p>Text at bottom</p>

because it is preceded by a long, uninterrupted series of paragraph
elements, each containing just a non-blocking space character.

Here's a query that returns the desired paragraph element:

//p[string-length(.) gt 1][count(preceding-sibling::p[. eq '&#160;']) ge 20]

However, if I insert a non-empty paragraph element in the middle of that
long series:

<body>
    <p>Text at top</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>Other text</p>  <------------
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>&#160;</p>
    <p>Text at bottom</p>
</body>

then my query erroneously returns the same paragraph element. That is, my
XPath query does not account for the requirement that the long series of
paragraph elements be uninterrupted. How to write an XPath 2.0 query for
this?

/Roger

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