[Answers](https://scrapfly.io/blog)   /  [xpath](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/xpath)   /  [How to reverse expressions in XPath?](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/how-to-reverse-expression-in-xpath)   # How to reverse expressions in XPath?

 by [Bernardas Alisauskas](https://scrapfly.io/blog/author/bernardas) Apr 19, 2023 1 min read [\#xpath](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/xpath) 

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To reverse expression in XPath the `not()` function can be used which reverses any expression passed to it.

This is useful for creative negative predicates that are vital in many HTML parsing tasks. See this interactive example:

<!-- select only product data and ignore advertisements--> <article> <h1>Product Details:</h1> <div>price: 199</div> <div class="advertisement">Buy today?</div> <div>year: 2023</div> </article> Above, we can use `not()` function to filter out special HTML elements like advertisements.



 

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