Paths

A path expression (or simply a path) represents a set of values that are reachable when traversing a given sequence of links or properties from some source set.

The result of a path expression depends on whether it terminates with a link or property reference.

  1. if a path does not end with a property reference, then it represents a unique set of objects reachable from the set at the root of the path;
  2. if a path does end with a property reference, then it represents a list of property values for every element in the unique set of objects reachable from the set at the root of the path.

The syntactic form of a path is:


1. expression path-step [ path-step ... ]

3. where path-step is:
4. step-direction pointer-name

The individual path components are:

expression

Any valid expression.

step-direction

It can be one of the following:

  • . for an outgoing link reference
  • .< for an incoming or backlink reference
  • @ for a link property reference

pointer-name

This must be a valid link or link property name.