Here's my input file

<header>
<detail/>
<detail/>
<detail/>
</header>

Here's my xslt file

<xsl:template match="/">
<book>
<xsl:for-each select="header/detail">
<chapter/>
</xsl:for-each>
<count><xsl:value-of select="count(//chapter)"/></count>
</book>
</xsl:template>

So the output file will look like this

<book>
<chapter/>
<chapter/>
<chapter/>
<count>3</count>
</book>

But I always get <count>0.0E0</count> instead of <count>3</count>

I want to count <chapter> instead of <detail> node because the number of <chapter> will be different. For simplicity's sake, I just do a 1-1 mapping in my example above.

Do you have any ideas?

Thanks

Well the easiest way is to work out how you determine how may chapter items there are going to be and count them. As your example doesn't illustrate your real input XML there is no way we can help you do this.

If you are using XSLT 2.0 then you could store the output in a temporary variable, and then count against that.

__________________
/- Sam Judson : Wrox Technical Editor -/

Think before you post: What have you tried?

In my XSL file, I will do a lot of group-by against the input file inside a for-each loop therefore the number of <chapter> nodes will be different each time so there's no way for me to determine how many <chapter> will come out each time.

I'm using XSLT 2. Can you show me how to store output in a temporary variable please? Thanks

You can store the <chapter> in a variable and count like below:
If you could post a relevant part of your input xml and xslt, then someone here can give you a good idea.

__________________
Rummy