On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Kelvin Yeow wrote:
> I wonder what XPath expressions would cause an "XPath processor" to sweat?
> Any "XPath processor" developer out there?
Howdy, I'm Bob, one of the developers of Jaxen (http://jaxen.org/), a
'universal' XPath engine for Java.
The biggest issue we've had (it's Today's Big Issue) is regarding
document-ordering when using a union expression.
$foo/bar | $cheese/melty
XPath says that nodes should be returned in 'document order', which
becomes a non-trivial in the case of some expressions involving
the union operator. One developer has a solution, but it is of
O(tree-size) complexity. Do that against a 30mb document, and
suddenly XPath isn't nearly as attractive.
Long/complex xpaths, or xpaths involving '//' and such aren't really
that hairy.
-bob
