Re: [xsl] Query re XMLSpy XPath engine

[Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo at metalab dot unc dot edu>]

At 1:23 PM +1000 7/22/02, Michael Leditschke wrote:
> I have the following document
>
> <root xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";
> xmlns="http://www.a.com";>
>   <hr xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"/>
> </root>
>
> Using the inbuilt XPath engine in XMLSpy 4.4, I
> issue the following XPath query
>
> //hr
>
> It returns the hr element.
>
> If I try
>
> //html:hr
>
> nothing is returned.
>
> This seems the wrong way around to me. Have
> I missed something?
Yes. Your hr element is in the http://www.a.com namespace, not the 
http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml namespace. So ion the second case XMLSpy 
is correct.

However, in the first case, XMLSpy is incorrect. //hr requests an hr 
element in no namespace because the default namespace never applies 
in an XPath expression. Thus, //hr should return an empty node-set.
--

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
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|          XML in a  Nutshell, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly, 2002)          |
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