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

There's a difference in the context group. //para[1] is short for /descendant-or-self::node()/child::para[1], which returns every para that is the first child of its parent. /descendant::para[1] returns only the first para in the entire subtree.