Hi Christian -

That helps enormously; thank you!

I got hung up with the FLOWR expression because $test update {for $a in $test/descendant::html:ins return ....} doesn't work and I have yet to establish useful mental patterns for what the "node was not created by transform expression" error message means.

The terse second version is what I was after; thank you!

-- Graydon

On Sat, Sep 27, 2025, at 02:59, Christian Grün wrote:

Hi Graydon,

You can use FLWOR expressions also with the update keyword:

<xml><a>A</a></xml> update { for $a in ./a return replace node $a with $a/node() }

A shorter (possibly cryptic) variant is to use the simple map operator (!):

<xml><a>A</a></xml> update { a ! (replace node . with node()) }

Hope this helps, Christian

*Von:* Graydon Saunders via BaseX-Talk basex-talk@mailman.uni-konstanz.de *Gesendet:* Samstag, September 27, 2025 7:33:07 AM *An:* BaseX basex-talk@mailman.uni-konstanz.de *Betreff:* [basex-talk] replacing elements with their children using update

Hello!

So I can use

copy $c := $test modify (for $each in $c/descendant::html:ins return replace node $each with $each/node()) return $c

to unwrap all the html ins elements in some test HTML.

If I try to do this using update (because I am under the perhaps mistaken impression that update can do the same things copy/modify/return can)

$test update {replace node descendant::html:ins with 'CABBAGE'}

works fine; the various ins elements are found and replaced. But if I want to replace that particular ins element with its children, there doesn't seem to be a way to specify the children; the context item is the value of $test, not whatever descendant ins element is being replaced.

How could this be written using update? Can this be written using update?

thanks!

-- Graydon Saunders | graydonish@fastmail.com Þæs oferéode, ðisses swá mæg. -- Deor ("That passed, so may this.")