Text nodes in XQuery

Question

Creating a text node in XQuery is done like so

text { 'foo' }

Can someone explain the syntax here? Is a function being invoked? If so, I would expect to see text('foo').

Answer 1

That's a computed constructor; XQuery syntax for creating nodes. The same syntax works for creating (for example) elements and attributes:

element hello {
  attribute target { "world" }
}

See The XQuery spec for full details.