THE XML REVOLUTION - TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE FUTURE WEB

Abbreviations

Syntactic sugar: convenient notation for common situations

Normal syntax Abbreviation
child:: nothing (so child is the default axis)
attribute:: @
/descendant-or-self::node()/ //
self::node() . (useful because location paths starting with / begin evaluation at the root)
parent::node() ..

Normal syntax		Abbreviation
`child::`		nothing (so `child` is the default axis)
`attribute::`		`@`
`/descendant-or-self::node()/`		`//`
`self::node()`		`.` (useful because location paths starting with `/` begin evaluation at the root)
`parent::node()`		`..`

Example:

.//@href

selects all href attributes in descendants of the context node.

Furthermore, the coercion rules often allow compact notation, e.g.

foo[3]

refers to the third foo child element of the context node (because 3 is coerced to position()=3).