XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

The range( ) Function

The range() function takes as an argument an XPath expression that returns a location set. For each location in this set, the range( ) function returns a range exactly covering that location; that is, the start-point of the range is the point immediately before the location, and the end-point of the range is the point immediately after the location. If the location is an element node, then the range begins right before the element’s start-tag and finishes right after the element’s end-tag. For example, consider this XPointer:

xpointer(range(//title))

When applied to Example 11-1, it selects a range exactly covering the single title element. If there were more than one title element in the document, it would return one range for each such title element. If there were no title elements in the document, then it wouldn’t return any ranges.

Now consider this XPointer:

xpointer(range(/novel/*))

If applied to Example 11-1, it returns three ranges, one covering each of the three child elements of the novel root element.