Michael Kay wrote:
The subject says "deepest" rather than "farthest", so I suspect the meaning
is the node with maximum depth.

Okay. I really meant "deepest". Didn't think about there being a difference.



See http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl/sect2/N2193.html#d3377e91

Since I don't execute this in the context of an XSLT (should have told 
you) but with a DOM (dom4j) most of the answers don't apply.



$start//node[@a = 'avalue']/@id
  [not(count(ancestor::*) lt $start//node[@a =
'avalue']/@id/count(ancestor::*))]


I'll try this one. I think I can bind a node to a variable using Jaxen.



Btw, do you have any idea how dom4j/jaxen would compare to using [some 
other DOM (XOM maybe)]/Saxon XQuery performance wise? It's in a context 
where I will be doing the same query over and over against a 
non-changing (possibly big) document. Is it possible to "compile" a 
query with Saxon against a document or can you just compile the 
expression (as you can with Jaxen)?  Do I make myself even remotely 
understandable?



Thanks



/Marcus