Re: Proposed syntax for namespace binding in XPath

> > Is it possible to just match on prefix, regardless of binding?  eg,
> >
> > "foo:bar"
> >
> > ...will match any bar node prefixed with foo - the calling
> app doesn't
> > care what "foo" is bound to in the XML, as long that's the prefix.
> >
> > If that's possible, that would be a really useful option.
>
> Useful maybe, but that one would definitely be a
> non-conformance with the spec....

What you can already do of course in some APIs (including
saxon:evaluate-node()) is to take the namespace bindings for the XPath
expression from the in-scope namespaces of a given element node. That has
almost the same effect as matching on prefix, except when the source
document maps multiple prefixes to the same namespace (or the same prefix to
multiple namespaces). It's also open to abuse, but it works well in a
situation where the XPath expression is actually held within the document to
be searched.

I started replying to your previous post, but this one highlights it
perfectly - given an xml document that you are applying xpaths to, why
do you need to enforce the expanded qname - you effectively already
have the mappings defined in the source XML - its down to user to
ensure they apply the correct xpath to the correct XML - how likely is
it to ever give the wrong results?