Re: xpath processing brain dead

On Feb 26, 2009, at 5:41 PM, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
>> http://www.exslt.org/exsl/functions/node-set/index.html
>
> A node-set isn't a document.

yes.. :)

I guess what I'm saying is that if:

tinman=# SELECT XML'<foo/><bar/>';
xml
--------------
<foo/><bar/>
(1 row)

is considered to be valid per *SQL-XML*, then it should probably be
treated as a node-set in the context of xpath, not mangled with
<x>...</x>..

Certainly, I would expect an implicit "node-set() call" long before
wrapping the fragment in <x>...</x> and prefixing my xpath query.

However, I find the validity of the above, XML'<foo/><bar/>', a bit
disturbing to begin with. :P

> In any case, this functionality doesn't appear to be in libxml2,
> it's in libxslt according to the reference you provided.

I think that's *just* referencing the list of xslt implementations
that the extension function is known to be available in.. I doubt that
means to imply that the function or equivalent functionality is not
available in libxml2 itself. I'd wager that equivalent functionality
could be implemented if it weren't directly/already available.. =)