"Timo Nentwig" <tc*@spamgourmet.com> wrote in message
news:bv************@ID-18956.news.uni-berlin.de...
Hi!
I want to select the parent of <span class="h2"> (which is <td>). The
following does not work:
//span[@class="h2"]/../td
<blah>
<td>
<span class="h2" />
</td>
</blah>
Why not?
Michael already explained why -- this expression is selecting all siblings
"td" of all "span" elements, whose "class" attribute is "h2".
On the other side the seemingly correct XPath expression:
//span[@class="h2"]/..
does not select *the* parent of "span" -- it selects *all* parents of all
"span" elements, whose "class" attribute is "h2".
If you want the (one and only) parent of a specific single "span" element,
you shouldn't be using the "//" abbreviation.
Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev [XML MVP],
FXSL developer, XML Insider,
http://fxsl.sourceforge.net/ -- the home of FXSL
Resume:
http://fxsl.sf.net/DNovatchev/Resume/Res.html