What's the difference between //node and /descendant::node in xpath?

Question

I use a lot of XPath when locating elements in web pages using Selenium, and have moved away from using node1//node2 towards using node1/descendant::node2 more recently. Wha

Answer 1

see http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath#path-abbrev

// is just an abbreviation for the descendant:: axis

Edit

To quote:

//para is short for /descendant-or-self::node()/child::para

That is, it refers to all para which are a child of the context node or any node descended from the context node. As far as I can tell that translates into any descendant para of the context node.