I'd say XPath a way to get a nodeset or another XPath type out of something. E.g. the current date is not selected from a document. There always will be a need to get yet another thing as a nodeset, e.g. list a directory. Or, for boolean expressions, there will always be a need to test yet another thing, such as an environment variable.
These things, of course, should come as extension functions rather than special syntax, but then there will be a need to provide a small standard library of such functions :)
So yes, I believe it's useful if we're going to use XPath in a trusted environment, e.g. as a typical command-line tool. You won't deny Bash or Python this and other powerful abilities, will you? But of course it would be very unwise to run an untrusted Bash script.
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I'd say XPath a way to get a nodeset or another XPath type out of something. E.g. the current date is not selected from a document. There always will be a need to get yet another thing as a nodeset, e.g. list a directory. Or, for boolean expressions, there will always be a need to test yet another thing, such as an environment variable.
These things, of course, should come as extension functions rather than special syntax, but then there will be a need to provide a small standard library of such functions :)
So yes, I believe it's useful if we're going to use XPath in a trusted environment, e.g. as a typical command-line tool. You won't deny Bash or Python this and other powerful abilities, will you? But of course it would be very unwise to run an untrusted Bash script.