getting an absolute path from xpath selectors

Question

Is it possible for an xpath selection to return the absolute path for each node found?

for quick example

//chapter

to return

//book[1]/chapter
//book[2]/chapter
...

Thanks

Answer 1

No easy way to do so just using XPath. If you are using XSLT, there are several recipes available, for instance http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl/sect2/N6077.html#d7984e96.

Answer 2

Pythons lxml module can do it by calling an Elements' getpath method.