XPath cannot return string values

[Phrogz]

require 'nokogiri'
xpath = "concat('a','b')"
d = Nokogiri::HTML("")
p d.at_xpath(xpath), d.xpath(xpath)
#=> nil
#=> []

Compare this with the following string pasted into the address bar of Safari, Chrome, Firefox, or Opera:
javascript:alert( (new XPathEvaluator).evaluate( "concat('a','b')", document.documentElement ).stringValue );

Or compare to the result from the REXML implementation:

require 'rexml/document'
d = REXML::Document.new("")
p REXML::XPath.first(d, "concat('a','b')")
#=> "ab"

[tenderlove]

:'(

[Phrogz]

Now now, don't cry. It's not like there aren't plenty of workarounds in consumer code. :)

[tenderlove]

xpath methods can return things other than nodesets, you know, cause its fast. closed by 45c6d1d

[Phrogz]

Whoa, that was fast. Nice!