python/xpath question..

[Stefan Behnel]

Hi,

you should really read about XPath. There are also newsgroups specifically for
this topic, please use them.


bruce wrote:
> in my python, i'm using the xpath function to iterate/parse some html. i can
> do something like
> 
> s=d.xpath("//tr/td/text()")
> count=len(s)
> 
> and get the number of nodes that have text

That is a wrong assumption. It will give you the number of text nodes, not the
number of elements. They may or may not be the same.


> i can then do something like
> s=d.xpath("//tr/td")
> count2=len(s)
> 
> and get the number of total nodes...
> by subtracting, i can get the number of nodes, without text.. is there an
> easier way??!!

Yes, learn to use XPath, e.g.

  //tr/td[not string()]

Stefan