Re: quick XPath question: finding /a/b/c with a default namespace

[David Carlisle <davidc@nag.co.uk>]

> "the default namespace declared with xmlns is not used: if the QName does
> not have a prefix, then the namespace URI is null"

> So I thought that...

No, that paragraph describes the interpretation of the QNames in the
XPath: it has no bearing on the interpretation of names in the document.
so in the XPath /a/b/c  refers to elements in the null namespace (or,
more properly, elements in no namespace). 

>  can only find <c> with the XPath expression
> /*:a/*:b/*:c

Nope you can not do that as there is no *: construct to wildcard over
namespaces.

If you really don't want to declare a namespace then

/*[local-name(.)='a']/*[local-name(.)='b']/*[local-name(.)='c']
will get you there.

> This seems unfortunate for non-XSLT uses of XPath.
No, it just means that any API for qurying into namespace aware documents
with XPath had better offer a mechanism for setting up the current
namespace/prefix bindings.

David


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