Hello,

My last few posts have been revolving aroung the same problem, and I
still cant solve it and I would be really appreciate if anyone could
spot a problem.

a section of my XML goes like

....
     <parent>
         <child>
             <grandchild1>
             <grandchild2>
         <child>
     <parent>

/...

I need to describe a numeric link between grandchild elements and the
child elements.

I have been using count(preceding::*) to id the cells numerically:


<xsl:template select="grandchild1|grandchild2">
  <MyID>
     Child:      <xsl:value-of select="count(../preceding::*)"/>
     Grandchild: <xsl:value-of select="count(./preceding::*)"/>
  </MyID>
</xsl:template>


However, the first grandchild1 element that runs this has the same
count as the child element. (35 and 35).  The second grandchild element
that runs is incremented by one as expected, 35 and 36, meaning it
seems 1 too low.  The obvious problem is the first counts are returned
the same, negating the idea of unique numeric ID's.

Are these results to be expected?  I do not know why/how the ../ and ./
return the same value (surely the ../preceding has come back a node in
that first case and therefore should be -1 of the grandchild1?)

I know a simple fix is just to add one onto all of the grandchilds
(count(./preceding::*)+1) but it seems slight dodgey, i.e. a fix to a
potential problem in my XSL.

I would really appreciate is anyone could help me understand why this
does not work, so that I can fix it properly.

Any help will again be most appreciated.

Thanks, Rob.