[snip] > <paragraph id="01" style="para01"></paragraph> ^^^^ [snip] > xpath_bool(rawdata,'/mydocument/body/chapter/contents/paragraph[objid="2_1"]'); ^^^^^ To me it looks like attribute name mismatch, not to mention you forgot the '@' (i.e. I guess you wanted the xpath: '/mydocument/body/chapter/contents/paragraph[@id="2_1"]' If you were just sloppy writing the email, maybe you should also check your actual code for such sloppiness ;-) Cheers, Csaba.