Say we have the following XML:
[sourcecode language=’xml’]
[/sourcecode]
The question is, what does the XPath expression //para[1] return? I originally expected it to select all the para elements and then return just the first one. In fact, what it returns is
[sourcecode language=’xml’]
p1
p3
[/sourcecode]
This is because what the expression actually means is, “return all the para elements that are the first child of any element”.
Why is that? According to the XPath specification, // is actually the abbreviation for /descendant-or-self::node()/, so that //para is actually /descendant-or-self::node()/child::para.
Since p1 and p3 are the first children of their parents, and p2 is the second child* of its parent, the nodes returned are p1 and p3.
*Assuming we’re ignoring whitespace, of course, which is always a bit of an adventure.
If I really want the first instance of all the para elements, then I need the expression /descendant::para[1]. That collects all the para elements and returns the first one.
A side benefit to this approach is that it forced me to learn how to spell “descendant” correctly. 🙂
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