From: SER <ggg@...1.net>
Date: 2005-05-29T21:30:21+09:00
Subject: Re: Idiomatic way for collecting elements using REXML?

> Aside: What possessed the author of the REXML library to put all the
> XPath stuff in its own class with class methods? Why not simply

Three things.  First, XPath is not part of the XML spec -- it is its
own spec, and has nothing to do with the tree (DOM) parser aside from
the association an implementor makes.  Second, because *someday*,
you'll be able to use XPaths on things other than the DOM parser.

But the primary reason is historical.  There isn't really any reason
why there couldn't be an Element#match function that delegates to an
XPath instance.  Suggestions for improvements are always welcome,
although I warn you that I'm not prone to trolling the newsgroups for
them.

--- SER