From: Murali Mani <>
Subject: Quick question regarding XPath
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 05:51:07 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <>
mani> is it possible to say in XPath
mani>
mani> a//@b
mani>
mani> is the above equivalent to:
mani>
mani> (a/@b | a//*/@b)
mani>
mani> thanks, murali.
Since the above XPath expressions are regular expressions,
they can be implemented by some modified NFA.
The NFA for a//@b can be divided into two NFA, one is for
a/@b and the other is for a//*/@b. Therefore,
a//@b is equivalent to (a/@b | a//*/@b).
The above method is not applicable when an XPath expression
contains some order predicate.
makoto onizuka
