I have this flat XML file goes somethign like this
<item id='A'>
    <name>AA</name>
    <related>B</related>
    <related>C</related>
</item>
<item id='C'>
    <name>CC</name>
</item>
 and so on and so forth. I don't know how many nested items can exist, so I need to write a universal code to check for ids and see if they are in the related fields. I have been stuck in endless loops for now. Any suggestions? A sniplet would be appreciated. Thanks

It would be useful to have some idea of what output you are trying to produce. At present it's not clear what exactly your problem is. It might also be useful to see your endless loops - it's hard to see where people have gone wrong if they don't show you their code.

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