ruby / ruby/rexml

Weird return type of XPath.match and XPath.first

Open
#353 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
Ruby
Stars
182
Forks
99
Avg merge
2d 23h
Merged PRs (30d)
8

Description

XPath.match always returns an array, even if the evaluated value is not a nodeset.

REXML::XPath.match(REXML::Document.new, '1 + 2') #=> [3]
Nokogiri::XML.parse('<root/>').xpath('1+2') #=> 3

XPath.first returns non-nodeset value. first of non-nodeset value doesn't make sense.
ref: https://github.com/ruby/rexml/pull/342#discussion_r3670807519

REXML::XPath.first(REXML::Document.new, '1 + 2') #=> 3

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start at the REXML::XPath.match and REXML::XPath.first entry points and read the discussion linked from ruby/rexml#342. Compare their handling of the non-nodeset expression shown here, then verify the behavior against the documented or existing expectations for scalar XPath results.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
ruby
Domain
backend
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
55/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.