XSLT: How to find the count of unique children of a node?

Question

My XML looks like this:

    
        
            2
            3&         


        

Answer 1

If you want to do this in a generic way then you are really stretching the capability of XSLT 1.0 beyond its design limits. But it can be done.

Write a named template called deep-equal that takes two elements as its arguments and returns a string containing the character "F" if and only if they are not equal (for your purposes).

It might look like this:

  
  
  
    F
    F
    F
    F
    
      
        
          
          
            
            
          
        
      
    
  

Apply this to all relevant pairs of elements:

Test if the result contains an "F":

...