Re: [xml-dev] Beware of XPath expressions that produce false positives
On Sat, Sep 24, 2016 at 2:33 PM, Costello, Roger L. <[email protected]> wrote:
[Definition] An element is empty if and only if the element consists of a text node containing a string of length zero and nothing else (no attribute, comment, processing instruction, child element, or non-string value).
In general, there are no text nodes of length zero. <B/> and its equivalent <B></B> contain only an element node. Furthermore, parsers may discard comments, so you can't be sure whether <B><!--foo--></B> will be treated the same as <B/> or not.
--
John Cowan http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan [email protected]
Cash registers don't really add and subtract;
they only grind their gears.
But then they don't really grind their gears, either;
they only obey the laws of physics. --Unknown
GMail doesn't have rotating .sigs, but you can see mine at http://www.ccil.org/~cowan/signatures