Re: xpath processing brain dead

Robert Haas wrote:
>> What I have proposed for 8.3 should not break a single case that currently
>> behaves usefully. If anyone has a counter-example please show it.
>>
>> What I have proposed for 8.4 possibly would break current "useful" behaviour
>> (FSVO "useful"), but should be done anyway on correctness grounds.
>>
>
> I dunno, aren't XML document fragments sort of a pretty common case?
>
>
>

They are. So what? How does that contradict either of the statements
made above?

Programmers using libxml2 are used to handling this problem. Why must
postgres alone use a totally brain dead and utterly incorrect wrapping
to solve a problem that everyone else leaves up to the programmer to handle?

People in this thread are not concentrating on the fact that what we do
now can break correct input. That makes it an unquestionable bug,
IMNSHO. There seems to be agreement about what to do for 8.4, so we seem
to be arguing about what to do for 8.3. Are you *really* arguing that
prepending the xpath expression with '/x' in all cases should be allowed
to continue? If you are I can only assume your use of xml/xpath is
probably fairly light.

cheers

andrew