XPath / XQuery: find text in a node, but ignoring content of specific descendant elements

Question

I am trying to find a way to search for a string within nodes, but excluding ythe content of some subelements of those nodes. Plain and simple, I want to search for a string in

Answer 1

I want to search for a string in paragraphs of a text, excluding the footnotes which are children elements of the paragraphs

An XPath 1.0 - only solution:

Use:

//p//text()[not(ancestor::footnote) and contains(.,'text')]

Against the following XML document (obtained from yours but added p s within a footnote to make this more interesting):

    
My text starts here/
    
Then it goes on there
        It's not a very long text!
           
text
        
    

this XPath expression selects exactly the wanted text node:

My text starts here/