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Re: XPath brain teaser

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: XPath brain teaser
• From: Richard Tobin <richard@c...>
• Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 01:56:23 +0100 (BST)
• Cc:
• In-reply-to: <0b1301c36c23$36de0140$6401a8c0@snobird>
• Organization: HCRC, University of Edinburgh

>This is easier to understand if you think of it in terms of set construction
>and iterators. The two expressions with abbreviations eliminated are:
>
>/descendant-or-self::node()/para[1]
>/descendant::para[1]

You might ask why // means the first of these, rather than the more
obvious second.  The answer (I think) is precisely so that expressions
like //para[1] will mean what they do; it's more common to want to
treat the first paragraph in each section specially than the first
paragraph in the while document.

-- Richard

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