Remove XPath namespace axis handling part which is not working at all

[tompng]

Namespace axis should return a nodeset of Namespace Node, but Namespace Node class has not even been defined yet.
So namespace axis is completely unimplemented.
Right now, this incomplete code is just getting in the way of refactoring.

REXML::XPath.match(REXML::Document.new('<root/>'), '//*/namespace::*')
# before:
# => in REXML::XPathParser#node_test': undefined method 'raw_node' for an instance of Array (NoMethodError)

# after:
# warning: Namespace axis is not supported in REXML::XPathParser
# => []

Other options:

• Silently return empty nodeset
• Always raise error with a message

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Note

Copilot was unable to run its full agentic suite in this review.

Adds graceful handling for the XPath namespace axis in REXML by preventing exceptions and introducing a regression test.

Changes:

• Add a test to ensure namespace::* does not raise (regression for NoMethodError).
• Replace attempted namespace-axis evaluation with a warning and an empty result set.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.

File	Description
test/xpath/test_base.rb	Adds a regression test around namespace::* behavior.
lib/rexml/xpath_parser.rb	Stops attempting to evaluate namespace axis; emits warning and returns empty nodeset.

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