Order of results

Hi,

I have a question about the order of an XPath's results (assuming a node set result)

for the following xml,

<a>
	<b>
		<c>
			<d/>
			<e/>
			<f/>
		</c>
		<c>
			<d/>
			<e/>
			<f/>
		</c>
		<c>
			<d/>
			<e/>
			<f/>
		</c>
	</b>
</a>

the XPath,
	descendant-or-self::node()
would yield a node set in the folowing order,

	(root node),a,b,c,d,e,f,c,d,e,f,c,d,e,f

now if we added /child::* to the end of our XPath, i.e.,
	descendant-or-self::node()/child::*

should the results be in document order, i.e.,

	a,b,c,d,e,f,c,d,e,f,c,d,e,f

or should the children of each node be found and added to our result as they are found, i.e.

(child::*) Go through each of the nodes from descendant-or-self::node(),

children of (root)	= a
children of a		= b
children of b		= c, c, c

and so on resulting in the following,

	a,b,c,c,c,d,e,f,d,e,f,d,e,f

thanks,

James

... James Swift
... Developer
... Altova GmbH - The XML Spy Company

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Received on Thursday, 10 January 2002 12:56:22 UTC