xml-dev - XPointer question

[Stefan Kreutter <stefan@objectfarm.org>]

Hello there!

given the following XML-snippet:

<customers>
<customer id="foo">
<name>Bart Simpson</name>
</customer>
<customer id="bar">
<name>Homer Simpson</name>
</customer>
</customers>

can I use th following XPointer to get the customer ID of Bart Simpson:

root().child(all, customer).child(1,name).string(1, "Bart Simpson").ancestor(1, customer).attr(id)

I guess this sould work since the XPointer grammar allows to place OtherTerm after a StringTerm, but I'm not sure if I understood the spec completely.

Since string() might return portions of multiple nodes (see 3.7 of WD-xptr-19980202) applying ancestor() seems a little problematic.

BTW is there a typo in the XPtr-spec? In grammar rule [2] it says:

[2] OtherTerms ::= OhterTerm | OtherTerm . OtherTerm


shouldn't that be:

[2] OtherTerms ::= OhterTerm | OtherTerm . OtherTerms

this would allow XPointers of any length not just one or two OtherTerms.

-Stefan