How does dot(.) in xpath to take multiple form in identifying an element and matching a text

Answer 1

The text() in contains(text(),'Associated Elements') is a selector that matches all of the text nodes that are children of the context node - it returns a node-set. That node-set is converted to string and passed to the contains() function.

text() isn't a function but a node test. It is used to select all text-node children of the context node. So, if the context node is an element named x, then text() selects all text-node children of x.

When you use contains(., 'Associated Elements') only an individual text node is passed to the function and it is able to uniquely match the text.

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