How to access non-first matches with xpath in Selenium RC ?

Question

I have 20 labels in my page:

In [85]: sel.get_xpath_count("//label")
Out[85]: u'20'

And I can get the first one be default:

In [86]: sel.get_text("xpath=//label")
Out[86]: u'First label:'

But, unlike the xpath docs I've found, I'm getting an error trying to subscript the xpath to get to the second label's text:

In [87]: sel.get_text("xpath=//label[2]")
ERROR: An unexpected error occurred while tokenizing input
The following traceback may be corrupted or invalid
The error message is: ('EOF in multi-line statement', (216, 0))

ERROR: An unexpected error occurred while tokenizing input
The following traceback may be corrupted or invalid
The error message is: ('EOF in multi-line statement', (1186, 0))

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Exception                                 Traceback (most recent call last)

/Users/me/<ipython console> in <module>()

/Users/me/selenium.pyc in get_text(self, locator)
   1187         'locator' is an element locator
   1188         """
-> 1189         return self.get_string("getText", [locator,])
   1190 
   1191 

/Users/me/selenium.pyc in get_string(self, verb, args)
    217 
    218     def get_string(self, verb, args):
--> 219         result = self.do_command(verb, args)
    220         return result[3:]
    221 

/Users/me/selenium.pyc in do_command(self, verb, args)
    213         #print "Selenium Result: " + repr(data) + "\n\n"

    214         if (not data.startswith('OK')):
--> 215             raise Exception, data
    216         return data
    217 

Exception: ERROR: Element xpath=//label[2] not found

What gives?

Answer 1

Use:

(//label)[2]

The XPath expression you are currently using:

//label[2]

means:

Select every label element in the document that is the second label child of its parent. Chances are that every label in the document is just the first and only label child of its parent. In such a case the above expression selects nothing.