xpath to select nodes excluding by attribute value list

Question

I would like to know if there is shorter approach to selecting a list of nodes ignoring the ones that have an attribute value specified in a list

Working example:

/item[not(@uid='id1') and not(@uid='id2')]

Desired alternative:

/item[not(@uid in('id1','id2'))]

Answer 1

You can either use regex - if your xpath implementation supports it - or write

/item[not(@uid='id1' or @uid='id2')]

which might be a bit shorter.

Answer 2

If the list of attribute names is very long, the following is a good way to handle this situation:

//item[not(contains('|attr1|attr2|attr3|attr4|attr5|attr6|attrN|', 
                    concat('|', @uid, '|')
                    )
           )]

Answer 3

Maybe something like this??

/item[not(contains('id1 id2', @uid))]

Answer 4

At least in Xpath 2 general comparisons on sequences are performed pairwise and existentially, so you can write:

/item[not(@uid = ('id1','id2'))]