// is an abbreviation for /descendant-or-self::node()/. Thus with the expression //elementName you will find any element named elementName in the whole document tree.
Summary: XPath (XML Path Language) is a query language for selecting nodes from an XML document.
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XPath (for XML Path Language) is a query language for selecting a node or a nodeset from an XML document. XPath expressions are used in XSLT style sheets.
http://www.w3schools.com/xpath/
Jennifer Widom of the Stanford School of Engineering has video lectures with an XPath introduction and demo. There are more lectures about related technologies.
http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath20/, in particular http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath20/#id-path-expressions.
XQuery extends XPath. The Kernow GUI allows to test XQuery and thus XPath expressions.
// is an abbreviation for /descendant-or-self::node()/. Thus with the expression //elementName you will find any element named elementName in the whole document tree.
"XPath is a small language to access XML documents."