XPath and namespaces

[mlse]

Hi all,

This question is a follow-on from the one I posted here.

Consider the following equivalent XML fragments:

<root>
  <aaa xmlns="http:www.whatever.com">
    <bbb />
  </aaa>
</root>

<root xmlns:x="http:www.whatever.com">
  <x:aaa>
    <x:bbb />
  </x:aaa>
</root>

So, what would be the xpath for extracting "bbb" in each case? Would it be the same in each case? I hope it would be the same in each case because the two cases are equivalent.

EDIT: My instictive reaction in the second case is to write /root/x:aaa/x:bbb, but this would not work for the first case.

[jkd]

If you redeclare the aaa prefix in your XSLT document on the root element, like:

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:x="http://www.whatever.com">

Then, your XPath can look like "/root/x:aaa/x:bbb".

[mlse]

Ah! thanks for that ... so the two examples really are equivalent