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Re: Xpath query to return "NULL" values?

From: Joe Kesselman <keshlam.cat.nospam@-------.--->
To: NULL
Date: 6/6/2009 1:54:00 PM

Mario Splivalo wrote:
> <a>
>   <b>1</b>
>   <b>2</b>
>   <b></b>
>   <b>3</b>
> </a>
> 
> When I execute this XPath query against it: /a/b/text()
> I get only 1, 2 and 3:

That is correct. In the XML data model, an empty element has no children 
at all, so /a/b/text() or indeed /a/b/node() will skip over that entirely.

If you want an empty string, you could rewrite this as

/a/b/string(.)

which returns the string value of each <b> element in turn. Since the 
string value of an element is the concatenation of its contained text 
nodes, this will yield the results you expected.

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