Neo4J Cypher Match by multiple relationship types - strange behavior

Question

My graph looks like this medium-[:firstChapter]->chapter1-[:nextChapter]->chapter2_to_N there is only one node connected via :firstChapter and then several nodes may follow, connected via :nextChapter I tried to match all nodes that are either connected via relationship :firstChapter to medium or connected via :nextChapter from one chapter to another The query I tried looks like this ``` start n=node(543) match n-[:firstChapter|nextChapter*]->m return m; ``` node(543) is the node medium. Surprisingly, this query returns all nodes in the path, even though the nodes are not connected to n (=medium node) If I leave out the * sign after nextChapter, only the first node with the :firstChapter relationship is returned (chapter1), which seems to be correct. ``` start n=node(543) match n-[:firstChapter|nextChapter*]->m return m; ``` Why does the query above return nodes not connected to n? As far as I understand it, the * sign usually returns nodes that are an unlimited number of relationship…

Accepted Answer

Try doing `match p=n-[:firstChapter|nextChapter*]->m` to see what `p` is. Hopefully that provides some insight about how they are connected.

What you might be looking for in the end is:

```
start n=node(543) 
match n-[:firstChapter|nextChapter*]->m 
return collect(distinct m);
```

To get a collection of distinct chapter nodes that follow n.

update Here's another one--didn't actually test it but it might get you closer to what you want:

```
start n=node(543)
match n-[:firstChapter]->f-[:nextChapter*]-m
return f + collect(distinct m);
```

Neo4J Cypher Match by multiple relationship types - strange behavior

Solution

Problem