XPATHS and Default Namespaces | What is the story behind XPath and support for namespaces? Did XPath as a specification precede namespaces? If I have a document where elements have been given a default namespace: 



```
<foo xmlns="uri" />

```

It appears as though some of the XPath processor libraries won't recognize `//foo` because of the namespace whereas others will. The option my team has thought about is to add a namespace prefix using regular expressions to the XPath (you can add a namespace prefix via XmlNameTable) but this seems brittle since XPath is such a flexible language when it comes to node tests.


Is there a standard that applies to this?


My approach is a bit hackish but it seems to work fine; I remove the `xmlns` declaration with a search/replace and then apply XPath.



```
string readyForXpath = Regex.Replace(xmldocument, "xmlns=\".+\"", String.Empty );

```

Is that a fair approach or has anyone solved this differently?