xml.dom.minidom - documentElement vs. childNodes

[Peter Otten]

Skip Montanaro wrote:

> I'm getting somewhat painfully acquainted with xml.dom.minidom.  What is
> the relationship between its documentElement attribute and its childNodes
> list?
> I thought XML documents consisted of a single, possibly compound, node. 
> Why is a list of childNodes needed?

>>> import xml.dom.minidom as md
>>> dom = md.parseString("""<?xml version="1.0" ?><!--comment--><root/>""")
>>> dom.childNodes
[<DOM Comment node "comment">, <DOM Element: root at 0x4038c1ac>]
>>>

Seems like comments are preserved in childNodes, too.

Peter