& XSLT It seems to me this would be better handled by more general functions,
for example to compare whether a given range out of two nodesets was
identical, or perhaps to assemble the names of nodes just as str:concat
does for the string-values of nodes. Any of those would buy more
functionality for less effort.

For example, perhaps:

   subrange(node-set, start-pos, end-pos)

   node-set-eq(node-set1, node-set2)

   or concat-names(node-set) (now *that's* a function I could get
behind!)

These seem like more fundamental functionality, though they can all be
gotten already one way or another.

Hmmm. I just wrote your function without something like concat-names(),
and it does seem to be a bit of a pain (though of course, since we have
functions you can just do it once; it's not especially slow):

   <xsl:variable name="names-a"> 
      <xsl:for-each select="$a/ancestor::*[position() <= $distance]"> 
	   <xsl:value-of select="concat(name(),' ')"/> 
	</xsl:for-each> 
   </xsl:variable> 
   <xsl:variable name="names-b"> 
      <xsl:for-each select="$b/ancestor::*[position() <= $distance]"> 
	   <xsl:value-of select="concat(name(),' ')"/> 
	</xsl:for-each> 
   </xsl:variable> 
   <xsl:if test="$names-a = $names-b">  1 </xsl:if>

Do you think this is really a common enough need to warrant its own
extension? I'd be much more comfortable with a more general function
that would facilitate it, such as concat-names() (such a function, for
example, would let you write the above without foreach, all in one
expression. In XSLT 2 with a "real" for, it's also easier.

Steve

>  ""John L. Clark"" <jlc6@[...].edu> wrote in message 
>  news:4fb69e5d0701220710n6a3547f2w666b4f0e32237583@[...]..
>  >I propose a new EXSLT function that might be called  
>  >`has-name-match()`.  The signature for this function would 
>  be similar  
>  >to the following:
>  >
>  >  boolean has-name-match(node-set a, node-set b, integer distance?)
>  >
>  > This function would examine the first node of both a and b and 
>  > determine if the name of each element on the 
>  ancestor-or-self axis for 
>  > each of these nodes is the same, up to distance from each 
>  node.  More 
>  > precisely, `has-name-match()` returns true if and only if
>  > (local-name(a) = local-name(b) and namespace-uri(a) = 
>  namespace-uri(b) 
>  > and has-name-match(a/.., b/.., distance - 1)).
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