XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

The range-to( ) Function

The range-to( ) function is evaluated with respect to a context node. It takes a location set as an argument that should return exactly one location. The start-points of the context nodes are the start-points of the ranges it returns. The end-point of the argument is the end-point of the ranges. If the context node set contains multiple nodes, then the range-to( ) function returns multiple ranges.

Tip

This function is underspecified in the XPointer specification. In particular, it is not clear what should happen if the argument contains more or less than one location.

For instance, suppose you want to produce a single range that covers everything between <title> and </year> in Example 11-1. XPointer does this by starting with the start-point of the title element and continuing to the end-point of the year element:

xpointer(//title/range-to(year))

Ranges do not necessarily have to cover well-formed fragments of XML. For instance, the start-tag of an element can be included but the end-tag left out. This XPointer selects <title>The Wonderful Wizard of Oz:

xpointer(//title/range-to(text( )))

It starts at the start-point of the title element, but it finishes at the end-point of the title element’s text node child, thereby omitting the end-tag.