[Bug 4868] XPath abbreviations for / and // syntactically incorrect

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=4868

           Summary: XPath abbreviations for / and // syntactically incorrect
           Product: XPath / XQuery / XSLT
           Version: Recommendation
          Platform: PC
        OS/Version: Windows XP
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P4
         Component: XPath
        AssignedTo: chamberl@almaden.ibm.com
        ReportedBy: ryan.gustafson@gmail.com
         QAContact: public-qt-comments@w3.org


In the version found at http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath20/#id-path-expressions

The statements which indicate to sometimes abbreviate / as
fn:root(self::node()) treat as document-node()/ and // as fn:root(self::node())
treat as document-node()/descendant-or-self::node() are not syntactically
correct.

My own parser, as well as the parser at
http://www.w3.org/2006/11/applets/xpathApplet.html refuse to parse such input.

The Formal Semantics http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery-semantics/#id-path-expressions
indicate a parenthesized version of the same construct.

Are the Formal Semantics are correct and XPath needs to be corrected?

Received on Thursday, 19 July 2007 07:03:31 UTC