[xsl] Are XPath expressions parsed using compiler parsing techniques?

["Roger L Costello costello@xxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Folks,

I dug out my old compiler "Dragon book" and started rereading it.

Chapter 1 lists some of the tools that employ compiler techniques. This one
caught my attention:

Query interpreters: A query interpreter translates a predicate containing
relational and boolean operators into commands to search a database of records
satisfying that predicate.

An XPath expression is a query. Not against a database, but against an XML
document. Are XPath expressions parsed using compiler parsing algorithms? Is a
syntax tree constructed for an XPath expression? Is the syntax tree
traversed?

/Roger