XPointer

XPointer is a language for locating data within an Extensible Markup Language (XML) document based on properties such as location within the document, character content, and attribute values. XPointer consists of a description that comes after the # symbol in a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). XPointer can be used alone or together with XPath, another language for locating data within an XML document.

In Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), the # symbol enables linking to a specific marked point within an HTML page. XPointer allows linking to a point based on content as well. In this way, a reader can, for example, be enabled to link to the next instance of a certain word, phrase, or sequence of characters within an XML document.