# XPath changes (also affecting XQuery)

Operator precedences have changed. They are now aligned with the internal 12 January 2004 draft, except that unary "+" and "-" bind more tightly than anything except "/".

The implementation of the `eq` family of operators has been brought into line with the latest specifications. In particular, an untypedAtomic value is now converted to a string, no longer to the type of the other operand. At compile time, a warning rather than an error is now produced if the static types of the two operands are incomparable but both optional: technically, comparison of `xs:integer?` to `xs:string?` is not a static error, because in the case where both operands evaluate to an empty sequence, the comparison is legitimate (and returns `()`).

The SequenceType syntax `empty()` is now implemented.

The syntax for SequenceTypes incorporates some changes agreed by the W3C Working Groups but not yet published. Specifically, `element(N)` matches any element named N whether or not N is declared in a schema; `element(*)` matches any element; `element(N, T)` matches any element named N whose type annotation is T, where T is a simple or global type defined in a schema, or a built-in type; `schema-element(N)` matches an element whose name is N, or a name in the substitution group of N, where N is a global element declaration in the schema, and whose type matches the type of this global element. And similarly for attributes.

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