What's the difference between //node and /descendant::node in xpath?
xpath
Solution
see http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath#path-abbrev
// is just an abbreviation for the descendant:: axis
Edit
To quote:
//para is short for /descendant-or-self::node()/child::para
That is, it refers to all para which are a child of the context node or any node descended from the context node. As far as I can tell that translates into any descendant para of the context node.
Problem
I use a lot of XPath when locating elements in web pages using Selenium, and have moved away from using node1//node2 towards using node1/descendant::node2 more recently. What's the difference between the two methods? Is one more efficient than the other? Example XML snippet to demonstrate: ``` <div id="books"> <table> <tr><td class="title">Lord of the Rings</td><td class="author">JRR Tolkein</td></tr> <tr><td class="title">The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy</td><td class="author">Douglas Adams</td></tr> </table> </div> ``` So it'd be: ``` id('books')//td[@class='title'] ``` or: ``` id('books')/descendant::td[@class='title'] ```