Hi, Basically I want to break down the path-expression of a node in my XML into its elementary steps. QName: "Q{http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions}root()/Q{}A[1]/Q{}B[1]/Q{}C[1]/Q{} D[1]" must become QName-sequence: ("Q{http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions}root()", "Q{}A[1] ", "Q{}B[1] ", "Q{}C[1] ", "Q{}D[1]") So I need to break the path-expression down on the "/"-characters which aren't part of the namespace-uries. I'm using the "fn:tokenize"-function for this. The function uses a "regular expression" for it's separator. Unfortunately my regex-experience is zero (well, two days by now). I came up with the next brilliant ;-) solution: fn:tokenize( path( $node), "/(?=Q)"). Again, unfortunately, this doesn't work because the xquery-flavor of regex doesn't support looking around. Sure, I can use "/Q" as pattern and subsequently stick a "Q" in front of every substring (except the first one) but I'm looking for a solid solution. I there anyone out there with enough "regex-for-xquery"- experience to help me with this? Big thanx for that in advance. @Christian: On the other hand I can imagine that within Basex the path-expression is built from these elementary steps. If so, is it in any way possibly to retrieve this elementary steps sequence instead of this path-expression? Thanx, Rob Stapper --- Dit e-mailbericht bevat geen virussen en malware omdat avast! Antivirus-bescherming actief is. http://www.avast.com