Re: [xsl] get immediat preceeding node, if it is a comment

[Joerg Heinicke <joerg dot heinicke at gmx dot de>]

Andrew Welch wrote:
> >  preceding-sibling::node()[normalize-space()][1][self::comment()]
> >
> >  This will select the first in a list of nodes that return true for
> >  normalize-space() and self::comment().
> >
> > No, that would be
> >
> > preceding-sibling::node()[normalize-space()][self::comment()][1]
> >
> > What you have,
> > preceding-sibling::node()[normalize-space()][1][self::comment()]
> >
> > selects the first non-whitespace-text node if it is a comment.
>
> Sure.  But aren't they both the same (they select the same node)? The
> only difference would be the size of the lists the predicates create?
> (feel free to point out the correct terminology here)
Definitely no.

<root>
  <!--   test     -->
  <test1>test</test1>
  <test2>test</test2>
  <!--   test     -->
  <test3>test</test3>
  <test4>test</test4>
</root>

with context test4:

preceding-sibling::node() gets all other test elements and the comments and 
the whitespace only text nodes.

preceding-sibling::node()[normalize-space()] gets all other test elements 
and the comments.

preceding-sibling::node()[normalize-space()][1] gets test3.

preceding-sibling::node()[normalize-space()][1][self::comment()] gets 
nothing, because test3 isn't a comment.

preceding-sibling::node()[normalize-space()][self::comment()] gets all comments.

preceding-sibling::node()[normalize-space()][self::comment()][1] gets the 
comment infront of test3.

But the original poster asked for immediately preceding comments. So only
preceding-sibling::node()[normalize-space()][1][self::comment()] is correct 
- with the danger of empty elements.

Regards,

Joerg

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