Question

With this xml:

<div val1="q">a</div>
<div val2="w">b</div>
<div val3="e">c</div>
<div some="r">d</div>
<div thing="t">f</div>
<div name="y">g</div>

we want to find only

<div val1="q">a</div>
<div val2="w">b</div>
<div val3="e">c</div>

which are those nodes having an attribute where the attribute name begins with val

Answer 1

You can try this :

//div/@*[starts-with(name(.), 'val')]

if you know that you are looking for the first attribute of the div element.

Edit:

Sorry didn’t realize you wanted to select the elements themselves. You could use parent::div or what you did, but the proper way of doing this would be to select directly the div themselves :

//div[@*[starts-with(name(), 'val')]]