A path expression sorted its result into document order through orderUnique,
which first ran a Set-based de-duplication. But evaluateSteps already returns
a duplicate-free node-set: each step de-duplicates across its context nodes,
or uses an axis whose per-context results cannot overlap. So that Set copied
every node for nothing, and each copy retains the wrapped tree node, whose
weak parent reference forces a side table and the slow reference-counting
path.
Path and trailing-path evaluation now sort the steps' result directly.
Unions and filter primaries, which genuinely can carry duplicates, keep the
de-duplicating pass. Measured xpath ~9% faster on the 20k-item generated
corpus via a same-state A/B, identical results. The existing node-set
de-duplication and union tests cover that a path still yields each node once.
Mihaela Mihaljevic
4bd547d4b1