Want to move up the parent tree and examine an attribute on the way up. When it matches want to stop.
Want to only search till an element of a specific type is detected.

For illustration of the quest I use XML Schema:

<xsl:value-of select="ancestor-or-self::*/@maxOccurs>1 or ancestor-or-self::*/@maxOccurs='unbounded'"/>

This one searches all nodes up the tree and returns true if an ancestor with @maxOccurs>1 or unbounded exists. But that's not what I want, I want to go up but no further than xs:complexType

Basically what I intend to do is find out whether an element has maxOccurs >1 or is part of a model group with maxOccurs > 1

So in pseudo language:

function boolean is-multi( node )
begin
if node/@maxOccurs > 1 or 'unbounded'
return true
if node = 'complexType'
return false

return is-multi( node->parent )
end

As you've guessed by now, I am not a proficient XSLT programmer..

select="ancestor-or-self::*[number(@maxOccurs) > 1 or @maxOccurs = 'unbounded' or parent::xs:complexType][1]"

will find you the innermost ancestor that satisfies one of these three conditions. I've specifed the last condition as parent::complexType to ensure that the search never goes as far as the xs:complexType element itself.

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

Hi Michael,
Thanks for the msg. Still some q. about this.
You correctly assumed I wanted to stop the search one level below the xs:complexType.
Further I am not sure I understand the code. You wrote number(@maxOccurs) > 1, which looks odd to me. What does it mean? Also the statement does should return boolean true if the @maxOccurs>1 or unbounded is present, false otherwise. It does not seem to do that.

Sorry for my ignorance..
Thanks again.

number(@maxOccurs) > 1 means take the attribute node called maxOccurs, convert it to a number, and test to see if the number is greater than 1. The way number() works, if there is no such attribute or if it is not numeric, the value will be NaN, and NaN > 1 is false.

The expression I showed you will select the relevant element. Like any expression that returns a node-set, you can use it in a boolean context (for example in <xsl:if test="....">) and it will return true if the node-set is non-empty.

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

Hi Michael, thanks for your help. It works now. I had to do still a little extra because

select="ancestor-or-self::*[number(@maxOccurs) > 1 or @maxOccurs = 'unbounded' or parent::xs:complexType][1]"

selects the node that has either maxOccurs or a parent which is complexType, so need to check that again:

<xsl:variable
name="isMulti1"
select="ancestor-or-self::*[number(@maxOccurs) > 1 or @maxOccurs = 'unbounded' or parent::xs:complexType][1]"/>
<xsl:variable
name="isMulti"
select="boolean(number($isMulti1/@maxOccurs)>1 or $isMulti1/@maxOccurs='unbounded')"/>