I'm glad to see experienced people here, especially Michael Kay, whose XSLT book got me started in XSLT.

I'm having a problem determining if a parent node is the first one in the series.

The XML:

<xmlfile>
  <a>
    <b>This is where I am</b>
  </a>
  <a>
    <b>Here's somebody else</b>
  </a>
  <a>
    <b>And yet another</b>
  </a>
</xmlfile>

The XSLT:
<xsl:template match = "b">
  <xsl:apply-templates />

  <xsl:if test = "parent::a[position()=1]">
    <xsl:text>- at the first a</xsl:text>
  </xsl:if>
</xsl:template>

Desired Output:
This is where I am - at the first a
Here's somebody else
And yet another

Actual Output:
This is where I am - at the first a
Here's somebody else - at the first a
And yet another - at the first a

This is actually a simplistic recreation of the actual problem, but seeing as how I'm dealing with a 10k XSLT, and complex inputs to boot, I think this slice should solve it. I think the solution could be googled, but I haven't got the terminology to find it. I've only been doing XSLT for a few weeks, so sorry if it's a newb question.

The expression

parent::a[position()=1]

selects all the parents of the the context node that are called a, and then selects the first of these. Of course, a node can only have one parent, so this doesn't work.

You want

if test="not(parent::a/preceding-sibling::a)"



Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference

It's the simplicity of your solutions that make you the genuis you are. Thanks for the solutions, and for the books.