Patterns and location paths

[Kay Michael]

> Richard Tobin [mailto:richard at cogsci.ed.ac.uk] wrote
> it appears that 
> 
>    foo//bar[5]
> 
> means different things depending on where it appears.
> 
> As a location path (see section 6.1), it selects a bar element that is
> a descendent of a foo child of the current node, and that is the fifth
> such element in document order.
> 
> As a pattern (see section 6.3), it matches a bar element that is a
> descendent of a foo element, and that is the fifth foo child of its
> parent.
> 
Actually, as a pattern it seems to mean different things depending which
explanation you read. Arguably the sentence below production [52] "A pattern
is defined to match a node..." is definitive, in which case by definition
the pattern means the same thing in both contexts. If this is true, however,
the "it is easy to understand" explanation that follows appears to be
incorrect.

Mike Kay

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