Testing text() nodes vs string values in XPath

I have a node as follows:

<span class=\"portal-text-medium\">Office Hours</span>

For the XPath I use

//span[text()=\'Office Hours\']

which should work, but it never does. I can use *contains(text(),\'Office Hours\')]* but that won\'t find an exact match and I have to verify there is no \"*\". This is not the only time it hasn\'t worked for me. I have seen it work before so I don\'t know what is wrong. Any idea?

Yes I can, and do, use starts-with but it is not quite the same.

XPath `text() =` is different than XPath `. =`

(Matching text nodes is different than matching string values)

The following XPaths are not the same...

//span[text() = \'Office Hours\']

Says:

Select the span elements that have an immediate child text node equal to \'Office Hours`.
//span[. = \'Office Hours\']

Says:

Select the span elements whose string value is equal to \'Office Hours`.

In short, for element nodes:

The string-value of an element node is the concatenation of the string-values of all text node descendants of the element node in document order.

Examples

The following span elements would match only #1:

Office Hours 8:00-10:00
My Office Hours

The following span elements would match only #2:

Office Hours
Office Hours

The following span element would match both #1 and #2:

Office Hours