Trying to recursively remove nodes from a set

[robertstone]

The following code is meant to take a set of entry elements and while iterating through them using recursion, output a <spanspec> tag for each unique set of @namest and @nameend attributes found in the elements of the set. The output of this seems to be very unpredictable though creating duplicate spanspecs as well as stopping at unusual points. It seems to have numerous errors, but I would love to clean this up quickly to work appropriately.

-Robert Stone


<xsl:template name="add-missing-spanspecs">

<xsl:param name="entries" />
<xsl:variable name="first-bad-entry">
<xsl:copy-of select="$entries[1]" />
</xsl:variable>

<xsl:if test="count($entries) > 0">

<!-- output spanspec for $first-bad-entry -->

<xsl:variable name="remaining-entries"
select="$entries[ not( @namest = first-bad-entry/entry[1]/@namest and @nameend = first-bad-entry/entry[1]/@nameend ) ]" />

<xsl:call-template name="add-missing-spanspecs">
<xsl:with-param name="entries" select="$remaining-entries" />
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:if>

</xsl:template>

[jkmyoung]

Since you're taking unique attribute values, I suggest you use Muenchian grouping, instead of your template:
http://www.jenitennison.com/xslt/grouping/muenchian.html
Here is an altered version of this based on the concept

<xsl:for-each select="entry">
  <xsl:if test="not(preceding-sibling::entry[@namest = current()/@namest][@nameend=current()/@nameend])">
    <!-- output spansec here -->
  </xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>