Re: [xml] How could I understand the slightly difference of the parsing process of E1/E2[E3] and E1[E2][E3]?

[Bruce Miller <bruce miller nist gov>]

On 01/20/2012 12:46 AM, Ming Chen wrote:
> Thank you Bruce,
> My colleague began to have some approval of dealing a step (regardless of how
> many predicates attached) as a whole, //rec/(para[1]). That is a big progress
> for me.
> We are following the XPath 2.0 spec. Are the both have the same behaviour about
> the parsing of steps with predicates?

Frankly, I haven't spent much time looking at the XPath 2
spec, since I would be wishing for features I can't use
in my current applications...

> While we still cannot reach an agreement about the DFS and BFS dispute. For
> example, step1/step2/step3/step4, assume that each has multiple matched nodes,
> should it be interpreted as step1/(step2/(step3/step4)) or
> ((step1/step2)/step3)/step4?

Either, depending on what you mean by the parentheses :>

You might try the XPath 1 spec as (possibly) being shorter
and easier to digest; especially section 2 about Location Paths:
  "The initial sequence of steps selects a set of nodes
   relative to a context node. Each node in that set
   is used as a context node for the following step.
   The sets of nodes identified by that step are unioned together."

Hope that helps;
bruce

>