Lisa,



Thank you very much.  If you don't mind, I've run into another issue  
today with referencing the preceding element.  Here is an example:



<root>
  <apple/>
  <pear/>
  <orange/>
</root>

Given an xpath to orange (/root/orange) I want to reference the  
previous element which is a peer.  I tried the following with no  
success:



  /root/preceding::orange



I'm sure this is dreadfully simple, but I'm drawing a blank and I'm  
not seeing the answer in the tutorials I'm reading.



Duane



On Jan 3, 2006, at 2:52 PM, Xia Li wrote:



If you want to select the preceding <item> element of the <item>  
element

whose child <label> element satisfies the predicate [label =

'subTitle'], you might try the following XPath expression,



//item[label = 'subTitle']/preceding::item



Lisa




-----Original Message-----
From: Duane Gran [mailto:duane.gran@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 10:35 AM
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [xsl] trouble with preceding axis

I'm having some trouble using the preceding axis in XPath and would
be much obliged if someone could steer me in the right direction.  I
have the following document:

<root>
   <item order="3">
     <label>Title</label>
   </item>
   <item order="4">
     <label>subTitle</label>
   </item>
</root>

I have the following XPath to select the second item, based on the
value of its label child:

   //item[label = 'subTitle']



Now I want to modify this so that I refer to the preceding item
element, the first one in the list.  I tried the following without
success (it returns the second item element):

   //preceding::item[label = 'subTitle']



Suggestions are most welcome on this.



Duane