The range( ) Function
The range() function takes as an argument an XPath expression
that returns a location set. For each location in this set, the
range( ) function returns a range
exactly covering that location; that is, the start-point of the
range is the point immediately before the location, and the
end-point of the range is the point immediately after the location.
If the location is an element node, then the range begins right
before the element’s start-tag and finishes right after the
element’s end-tag. For example, consider this XPointer:
xpointer(range(//title))
When applied to Example
11-1, it selects a range exactly covering the single title element. If there were more than one
title element in the document, it
would return one range for each such title element. If there were no title elements in the document, then it
wouldn’t return any ranges.
Now consider this XPointer:
xpointer(range(/novel/*))
If applied to Example
11-1, it returns three ranges, one covering each of the three
child elements of the novel root
element.
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