Uhm... If Xalan's really accepting that syntax, it's a bug and we should fix it.
If you want to access namespaced nodes, you'll have to start the names in your XPath with a *PREFIX*, not just with a colon, and you'll have to provide a prefix resolver to map those to the appropriate URIs. Leading colon without a prefix does *not* mean "default namespace". XPath 2.0 introduces an architected concept of default-namespace-for-this-XPath. It doesn't use a bare leading colon either. ______________________________________ Joe Kesselman / IBM Research
