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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-18T03:34:31+00:00

I’d like to select a node which doesn’t have as its ancestor. for example,

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I’d like to select a node which doesn’t have as its ancestor.

for example,

<root>
  <e>
    <head>
       <id>3</id>
       <word>abandon</word>
    </head>
    <body>
       <head>
          <word>accept</word>
       </head>
    </body>
  </e>
</root>

I want to select the first element, not second one.

I tried:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

root = ET.fromstring(fin).getroot()
word = root.find('.//word[not(ancestor::body)]')

But it doesn’t work.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You can use XPath 1.0 with lxml:

    import lxml.etree as ET

fin = '''\
<root>
  <e>
    <head>
       <id>3</id>
       <word>abandon</word>
    </head>
    <body>
       <head>
          <word>accept</word>
       </head>
    </body>
  </e>
</root>'''


root = ET.fromstring(fin)
word = root.xpath('.//word[not(ancestor::body)]')
print(ET.tostring(word[0]))
# <word>abandon</word>
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