XPath to get all child elements except one with sp

Question

How do I target all elements in a document except a particular element name?

For example I want to exclude the terminate elements. They can occur throughout the document.

 <root>
     <terminate attr="1" />
     <other>
         The brown fox jumps over the fence. 
         <terminate>
            <b>stuff</b>
         </terminate>
     </other>
 </root>

I've tried using the not(..) operator without success likely because I'm using it wrong.

And frankly trying to Google 'not' is tough!

Answer 1

If you are using XPath 2.0 you can use

/root/* except /root/terminate

Which does what you would expect. It matches for nodes that exist in the first sequence but not the second.

XPath 2.0 Specification - except operator

Answer 2

The following xpath should work

/root/*[not(self::terminate)] 

Also, i think you can do it with this as well

/root/*[not(name()='terminate')]