XML::LibXML::XPathExpression - interface to libxml2 pre-compiled XPath expressions

Synopsis

use XML::LibXML;
my $compiled_xpath = XML::LibXML::XPathExpression->new('//foo[@bar="baz"][position()<4]');

# interface from XML::LibXML::Node

my $result = $node->find($compiled_xpath);
my @nodes = $node->findnodes($compiled_xpath);
my $value = $node->findvalue($compiled_xpath);

# interface from XML::LibXML::XPathContext

my $result = $xpc->find($compiled_xpath,$node);
my @nodes = $xpc->findnodes($compiled_xpath,$node);
my $value = $xpc->findvalue($compiled_xpath,$node);

Description
This is a perl interface to libxml2's pre-compiled XPath expressions. Pre-compiling an XPath expression can give in some performance benefit if the same XPath query is evaluated many times. XML::LibXML::XPathExpression objects can be passed to all find... functions XML::LibXML that expect an XPath expression.
new() 	

$compiled = XML::LibXML::XPathExpression->new( xpath_string );

The constructor takes an XPath 1.0 expression as a string and returns an object representing the pre-compiled expressions (the actual data structure is internal to libxml2).