REXML bug - descendant-or-self selector

[Gavin Kistner]

In XPath, "//" is an abbreviation for the "descendant-or-self"
selector. My understanding (and Microsoft's XPath implementation) of
this selector means that the following code should select the bar
element as well as the descendants.

[Sliver:~/Desktop] gkistner$ cat tmp.rb
xml = <<ENDXML
<foo id="foo">
<bar id="bar">
<jim id="jim" />
<jam id="jam" />
<bork><whee id="whee" /></bork>
</bar>
</foo>
ENDXML

require 'rexml/document'
include REXML
bar = XPath.first( Document.new( xml ), '//bar' )
bar.each_element( './/[@id]' ){ |element_with_id|
puts element_with_id
}


[Sliver:~/Desktop] gkistner$ ruby -v tmp.rb
ruby 1.8.2 (2004-12-25) [powerpc-darwin7.7.2]
<jim id='jim'/>
<jam id='jam'/>
<whee id='whee'/>

 

[Gavin Kistner]

In XPath, "//" is an abbreviation for the "descendant-or-self"
selector. My understanding (and Microsoft's XPath implementation)
of this selector means that the following code should select the
bar element as well as the descendants.

[Sliver:~/Desktop] gkistner$ cat tmp.rb
xml = <<ENDXML
<foo id="foo">
<bar id="bar">
<jim id="jim" />
<jam id="jam" />
<bork><whee id="whee" /></bork>
</bar>
</foo>
ENDXML

require 'rexml/document'
include REXML
bar = XPath.first( Document.new( xml ), '//bar' )
bar.each_element( './/*[@id]' ){ |element_with_id|
puts element_with_id
}

To set the record straight:
REXML is correct. My claim above (and what I believe is Microsoft's
implementation) is incorrect.

The XPath expression:
.//*[@id]
is XPath short-hand for:
./descendant-or-self::node()/child::*[attribute::id]

The implicit child:: axis is what causes the standard short-hand
usage of // to act truly like a descendant selector. If you wanted
the behavior that I describe above, then the legal XPath expression
(which REXML supports) would be:
.//self::*[@id]

Way to go Sean! Thanks for setting me straight. (I filed a bug
report, and he kindly explained why I was wrong. I researched the
matter with other web-based XPath tools[1] and confirmed my
incorrectness.)

[1] Such as the oh-so-useful http://www.zvon.org:9001/saxon/cgi-bin/
XLab/XML/extras.html?stylesheetFile=XSLT%2FxpathAxes.xslt&value=%2FAAA
%2FBBB%2F%2F*%5B%40id%5D