> 
> With the following xml:
> 
> <Root>
>     <Keys>
>          <Client id="abc">
>               <a />
>               <!-- a /--> 
>               <b />
>          </Client>
>     </Keys>
> </Root>

>From your results, it seems that whitespace text nodes have been
stripped from the data model. This happens when you say
<xsl:strip-space="*"/>, or in the case of Microsoft, it happens by
default. 
> 
> XPath: "Root/Keys/Client[@id="abc"]/ descendant-or-self::node()" 
> selects 4 nodes

The four nodes are the <Client> element, the <a> element, the comment,
and the <b> element.
> 
> XPath: "Root/Keys/Client[@id="abc"]/ 
> descendant-or-self::comment()" selects 1 node

This is the comment node.
> 
> XPath: "Root/Keys/Client[@id="abc"]/ 
> descendant-or-self::text()" selects 0 nodes. 
> 
> Please can someone explain to me why the last xpath doesn't 
> select 3 nodes.

Because none of the four nodes selected by descendant-or-self::node()
are text nodes. You would get some (whitespace-only) text nodes if you
hadn't stripped them from the data model.
> 
> I would like to select the 3 nodes <Client>, <a /> and <b />. 
> Any help is appreciated.
> 
Use descendant-or-self::*. The "*" selects all the nodes that are
elements.

Michael Kay


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