Re: [xsl] XPath expression confusion

Subject: Re: [xsl] XPath expression confusion
From: David Carlisle <davidc@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 12:24:11 GMT
> There seems to be a variety of usage in the term "root" in the context
> of XML documents.

Yes but since all but one of them is wrong in relation to xpath1
(especially if used as "root node" rather than "root element" or just
"root") we have to stamp down hard on users of the heretical forms:-)
(especially if the email address looks familiar, we can be kinder to
newcomers...)

But to get back to a slightly more serious point, the reason the
distinction matters is that 

>  and the "root element" is always the only child of "/".

this is wrong. The root node can have any number of children (which is
why XPath has the concept of a root node at all) top level comments and
PIs are children of the root node, and while it is true that a well
formed document will only have a single top level element node, XPath
actually models parsed entities (aka XML fragments) and allows multiple
element nodes, and text nodes, to appear as children of /.


David

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