xmllint unknown option '--xpath'

Question

I've seen this syntax several places (eg, here):

xmllint --xpath '/plist/array/string/text()' tmp.xml, used to query a particular XML node using an xpath selector. However, I'm getting the error Unknown option --xpath when I try to execute this on my machine (mac os x snow leopard).

Looking more closely at the man page for xmllint, I don't see the --xpath option documented...

Am I just totally missing something here?

Answer 1

xmllint --shell tmp.xml <<<'xpath /plist/array/string/text()'

If you need to make xmllint to read stdin:

cat /tmp/tmp.xml | xmllint --shell <(cat) <<<'xpath /plist/array/string/text()'