How many text nodes in this element with a CDATA section?

[Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>]

Hi Folks,

Consider this <Test> element which contains whitespace, a CDATA section, and then more whitespace:

<Test>
    <![CDATA[blah]]>
</Test>

What is the content of the <Test> element? Is it:

(a) A sequence of three strings: ("NL   ", "blah", "NL")

(b) A single string: "NL   blahNL"

I executed the following XPath expression to count the number of text nodes in the <Test> element:

	/Test/count(text())

that returned:

	1

Then I executed this XPath expression to show the text() node in the <Test> element:

	/Test/text()

that returned three items:

	"NL   "		/Test[1]/text()[1]
	"blah"  		/Test[1]/cdata-section()[1]
	"NL"		/Test[1]/text()[2]

Yikes!

The XPath results are contradicting each other, right?

I'm confused. What is the content of the <Test> element: a single string "NL   blahNL" or a sequence of three strings ("NL   ", "blah", "NL")

/Roger