Assuming that $pages holds a set of element nodes, and that $current_page holds a single element node, the expression tests whether one of the nodes in $pages has a child element called parent_id whose string value is equal to the string value of the id element that is a child of the node in $current_page.
Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference