Get Nth child of a node using xpath

Question

My sample input XML is:

 
   item
   item1
   item2
   item3

        

Answer 1

you can use this:

/root/a/b[position()=$variable]

position() is 1 based

http://saxon.sourceforge.net/saxon6.5.3/expressions.html

Answer 2

The following should work:

/root/a/b[2]

And if it doesn't, try:

/root/a/b[position()=2]