In Saxon, //bar is handled by an index, so exists(//bar) should be quite
fast after the first time (when the index is built).

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/ 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Welch [mailto:andrew.j.welch@xxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 12 August 2008 10:34
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  Cost of complex match patterns
> 
> Out of interest, given the match patterns:
> 
> match="foo[//bar]"
> 
> match="foo"
> 
> Should the former be avoided, or because it's within a match 
> pattern it's converted to a simple lookup so it's fine?
> 
> (I realise this is implementation dependent, just curious)