XML Companion, The, Third Edition

Simple location paths

Expressions often identify items by their location in the document structure. A 'path' is a series of steps to a target location. A location path may burrow down into the structure, skip over siblings, or work back up the structure.

Relative paths

A relative path is one that starts from an existing location in the document structure. The element that is ultimately targeted depends entirely upon where the starting point is. The same relative expression selects different elements when applied from different context locations:

The simplest form of relative path is a reference to an element name. In the following case, the reference ...