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Mike Champion wrote: > I'd submit that a processor that executes legal XPath expressions "is" an > XPath processor, whatever it's called, and whatever superset of > XPath syntax > it also supports. Because XPath can be extended via an extended function library, a la XSLT and XPointer, I would disagree with the claim that a processor that supports an extended *syntax* is in compliance with the XPath specification. There are parts of the picture that are not standardized--most notably how a node-set (or even a boolean, for that matter) should be serialized. These are implementation-dependent (whether the implementation is the XSLT specification or some XML database vendor). This leaves vendors much freedom (at the expense of having a standard). However, they should not feel free to extending the syntax of XPath, i.e. what the XPath spec *does* standardize. For example, the following is not in compliance with the XPath spec: /customer[name ~= "Mike"] whereas this alternative expression would be perfectly fine: /customer[ext:like(name, "Mike")] Evan Lenz XYZFind Corp.
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