Use this XPath expression:
/*/*/X/node()
This selects any node (element, text node, comment or processing instruction) that is a child of any X
element that is a grand-child of the top element of the XML document.
To verify what is selected, here is this XSLT transformation that outputs exactly the selected nodes:
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:copy-of select="/*/*/X/node()"/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
and it produces exactly the wanted, correct result:
First Text Node #1
<y> Y can Have Child Nodes #
<child> deep to it </child>
</y> Second Text Node #2
<z />
Explanation:
As defined in the W3 XPath 1.0 Spec, "child::node()
selects all the children of the context node, whatever their node type." This means that any element, text-node, comment-node and processing-instruction node children are selected by this node-test.
node()
is an abbreviation of child::node()
(because child::
is the primary axis and is used when no axis is explicitly specified).