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XPath (XML Path Language) is an expression language designed to support the query or transformation of XML documents. It was defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1999, [1] and can be used to compute values (e.g., strings, numbers, or Boolean values) from the content of an XML document.
This allows applications to access the data in the XML from the object, rather than using the DOM or SAX to retrieve the data from a direct representation of the XML itself. It makes it possible to read and write XML data using a programming language class library (e.g. C++, C#, Java), specifically created for a given XML data format. [1]
The XPath Data Model is a long specification, and goes into many features unrelated to XML trees. Listed below are key terms from that specification and the XML specification. [3] [4] Instance The data model represented as a sequence. Instance document A document using and conforming to the same sequence/XML tree. Sequence
Compared to XPath 2.0, XPath 3.0 adds the following new features: . Inline function expressions Anonymous functions can be created in an expression context. For example, the expression function ($ a as xs:double, $ b as xs:double) as xs:double {$ a * $ b} creates a function that returns the product of its two arguments.
The main difference is that XPath 1.0 was more relaxed about type conversion, for example comparing two strings ("4" > "4.0") was quite possible but would do a numeric comparison; in XPath 2.0 this is defined to compare the two values as strings using a context-defined collating sequence.
It also defines a set of method names (called standard query operators, or standard sequence operators), along with translation rules used by the compiler to translate query syntax expressions into expressions using fluent-style (called method syntax by Microsoft) with these method names, lambda expressions and anonymous types.
XMLStarlet is a set of command line utilities (toolkit) to query, transform, validate, and edit XML documents and files using a simple set of shell commands in a way similar to how it is done with UNIX grep, sed, awk, diff, patch, join, etc commands.
XQuery 1.0 lacked any kind of mechanism for dynamic binding or polymorphism; this has been remedied with the introduction of functions as first-class values in XQuery 3.0. The absence of this capability starts to become noticeable when writing large applications, or when writing code that is designed to be reusable in different environments.