"declare copy-namespaces no-preserve, inherit;" must come first:

True; that's the way it's defined in the specs (although it might not be obvious). See [1] for more information. Christian [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery-30/#id-query-prolog

$ cat e declare option output:omit-xml-declaration "no"; declare copy-namespaces no-preserve, inherit; <z/> $ basex e Stopped at line 2, column 8 in /tmp/e: [XPST0003] Unexpected end of query: 'copy-namespaces...'. $ cat f declare copy-namespaces no-preserve, inherit; declare option output:omit-xml-declaration "no"; <z/> $ basex f <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <z/> $ apt-cache policy basex basex:  Installed: 7.0.2-1 _______________________________________________ BaseX-Talk mailing list BaseX-Talk@mailman.uni-konstanz.de https://mailman.uni-konstanz.de/mailman/listinfo/basex-talk