Hi France, Bridger,

I don't think `$err:line-number` etc will help as these refer to the XQuery source. Getting line/col locations for nodes in XML sources is something an XML parser could do, but often they don't.

I think, this can not be done with BaseX XQuery out-of-the-box.

If you are happy writing some Java bridge code, then these links suggest that a SAX parser [1] or specifically Saxonhe 12.5 [2] could help.

/Andy

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/a/4916212/3210344

[2] https://github.com/xspec/xspec/issues/1971

On Sat, 4 Apr 2026 at 13:19, Bridger Dyson-Smith via BaseX-Talk <basex-talk@mailman.uni-konstanz.de> wrote:

Hi France -

On Sat, Apr 4, 2026, 6:27 AM France Baril via BaseX-Talk <basex-talk@mailman.uni-konstanz.de> wrote:

I am trying to to grab the line and colum number of an expression found with ft:search to better integrate results for dynamic interaction in an XML editor. I was hoping to use saxon:line-number, saxon:character-number, but they are unavailable in BaseX XQuery, only available in xslt:transform. Do you have suggestions on how to extract these details from what's available right now in XQuery?

You might have some luck with wrapping your expression in a try/catch but you'd need to throw some kind of error. The $err:line-number and $err:column-number variables are the first thing that comes to mind. I'm sure someone else has a clever idea though.

Hope that's helpful!
Best,
Bridger