Re: characters in xsl

'//stone' is a 'better match' in the sense that it is more specific. It will not match the root element if its name would be stone. Thus not all 'stone' elements in the document, but all _child_ elements (= elements that have a parent) named 'stone'. It works in fact the same as './/stone', where the current element will not be included if it happened to be a 'stone' element as well.

No. The top level element is a child of the document root node / (which
is not an element) //stone selects all elements called stone.

To match or select the root element if it is stone, use '/stone'. To match any element stone, just use 'stone'. To access any stone element in the document, even the root, (at any moment during the transformation), use '/descendant-or-self::stone'.

If you are talking of match patterns you can't use descendant-or-self::

In short: it usually doesn't make sense to use // in match patterns. And keep in mind that //stone in select patterns don't include the root element.

XPath doesn't have a "root element" only teh document root which encodes
the whole document not its top level element.

David