Default xml namespace and attributes

Question

Hi,
I was trying to use default xml namespaces, but came upon something strange.
I got the following piece of xml:
<animal type="sheep" xmlns="http://blabla">
    <name>josh</name>
    <age>2</age>
</animal>
and the following code
public static var ns:Namespace = new Namespace("http://blabla");
var xml:XML; // xml will be read into this var, not going into details here
public function myfunc():void {
  default xml namespace = ns;
  trace(  xml.animal.@type );
now for some reason, the elements are correctly traversed using the default namespace. But the attribute isn't found. After a bit of debugging, I found that I could only retrieve the attribute when using xml.animal.attribute(new QName("", "type")). Am I doing something wrong here? Why isn't the attribute in the same default namespace as the element?
Kind regards,
Jan

Answer 1

The attribute should be in the element's namespace. If I run this snippet on the timeline, it outputs the correct values.
var xml:XML =
<xml>
<animal type="sheep" xmlns="http://blabla">
  <name>josh</name>
  <age>2</age>
</animal>
<animal type="cow" xmlns="http://blabla">
  <name>jim</name>
  <age>2</age>
</animal>
</xml>
var ns:Namespace = new Namespace("http://blabla");
default xml namespace = ns;
trace( xml.animal.@type ); // OUTPUT: sheepcow