[selenium] XPath: difference between dot and text()

My question is about specifics of using dot and text() in XPath. For example, following find_element lines returns same element:

driver.get('http://stackoverflow.com/')

driver.find_element_by_xpath('//a[text()="Ask Question"]')
driver.find_element_by_xpath('//a[.="Ask Question"]')

So what is the difference? What are the benefits and drawbacks of using . and text()?

enter image description here The XPath text() function locates elements within a text node while dot (.) locate elements inside or outside a text node. In the image description screenshot, the XPath text() function will only locate Success in DOM Example 2. It will not find success in DOM Example 1 because it's located between the tags.

In addition, the text() function will not find success in DOM Example 3 because success does not have a direct relationship to the element . Here's a video demo explaining the difference between text() and dot (.) https://youtu.be/oi2Q7-0ZIBg

There is big difference between dot (".") and text() :-

• The dot (".") in XPath is called the "context item expression" because it refers to the context item. This could be match with a node (such as an element, attribute, or text node) or an atomic value (such as a string, number, or boolean). While text() refers to match only element text which is in string form.

• The dot (".") notation is the current node in the DOM. This is going to be an object of type Node while Using the XPath function text() to get the text for an element only gets the text up to the first inner element. If the text you are looking for is after the inner element you must use the current node to search for the string and not the XPath text() function.

For an example :-

<a href="something.html">
  <img src="filename.gif">
  link
</a>

Here if you want to find anchor a element by using text link, you need to use dot ("."). Because if you use //a[contains(.,'link')] it finds the anchor a element but if you use //a[contains(text(),'link')] the text() function does not seem to find it.

Hope it will help you..:)