Hi Jan, Thanks for your feedback to the mailing list. Your query will return the expected paths if you call BaseX as follows: basex.bat -w -i datafile.xml queryfile.xq A short explanation: By default, BaseX ignores whitespaces when parsing XML documents. By specifying -w, whitespace chopping can be suppresed [1,2]. If you want to permanently disable whitespace chopping, you can achieve that by adding "CHOP=false" option in your .basex configuration file [2] A more comprehensive explanation (just ignore it if you are aware of all the details): In your query, you are checking if the string value of a parent element is identical to the string value of $rootElement. The following comparison is equivalent to yours: //Section[parent::*/data() != $rootElement/data()] This is the reason why it matters if the whitespace-only nodes will be parsed or not. – If your actual objective is to compare the XML structure, you could the following: //Section[not(deep-equal(parent::*, $rootElement))] The following solution compares node identities: //Section[not(parent::* is $rootElement)] Hope this helps Christian [1] https://docs.basex.org/wiki/Command-Line_Options [2] https://docs.basex.org/wiki/Configuration
Using BaseX 9.5.1, cmd-line “basex.bat -i datafile.xml queryfile.xq” leads to no result at all. I’m convinced there should be result equivalent to the one of the online xquery tester (https://www.videlibri.de/cgi-bin/xidelcgi)
For a modified query using string comparison based on fn:path(), BaseX gives the expected result.
%%% query begin %%%
let $rootElement := /child::*
for $x in //Section[parent::* != $rootElement]
return fn:path($x)
%%% query end %%%
%%% data begin %%%
<root>
<Section id="should not be reported 1" />
<Section id="should not be reported 2">
<Section id="should be reported 1"/>
<a>
<Section id="should be reported 2"/>
</a>
</Section>
<a>
<Section id="should be reported 3"/>
</a>
</root>
%%% data end %%%
%%% modified query begin %%%
let $rootElementPath := fn:path(/child::*)
for $x in //Section[fn:path(parent::*) != $rootElementPath]
return fn:path($x)
%%% query end %%%
Kind regards
Jan Červák