lxml and xpath(?)

[Peter Otten]

Pete Forman wrote:

> Peter Otten <__peter__ at web.de> writes:
> 
>> root = etree.fromstring(s)
>> for server in root.xpath("./server"):
>>     servername = server.xpath("./name/text()")[0]
> 
> When working with lxml I prefer to use this Python idiom.
> 
>     servername, = server.xpath("./name/text()")
> 
> That enforces a single result. The original code will detect a lack of
> results but if the query returns multiple results when only one is
> expected then it silently returns the first.

Good suggestion, and for those who find the trailing comma easy to overlook: 

     [servername] = server.xpath("./name/text()")