From: Mark Thomas <mark@...>
Date: 2008-09-17T00:27:39+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby / rexml / xpath bug?

On Sep 15, 5:48 pm, altinsel <altin...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Mark,
>
> Thank you.  The './/' syntax seems to work. (I'm very happy about
> that).
>
> Now if you don't mind I'd like to ask: as far as I understand it, the
> "each_element" method should only be plucking a specific branch
> ("place") off the tree, and that branch is a new, stand-alone tree,
> and shouldn't even have the first element's data, let alone the rest
> of the tree.  I even So how was that information even getting in
> there?

In XPath, the prefix '//' means start from the top of the tree, not
the 'current' node or "branch".

And I agree with Robert, the code is far from ideal; there is far too
much iteration. The code could be much simpler and more efficient. See
my diatribe on this here: http://markthomas.org/2008/08/22/eschew-xpathic-iteration/

-- Mark.