Marko Bekhta ( https://hibernate.atlassian.net/secure/ViewProfile.jspa?accountId=557058%... ) *commented* on HV-1946 ( https://hibernate.atlassian.net/browse/HV-1946?atlOrigin=eyJpIjoiNGVhN2Fi... ) Re: PathImpl.createCopy() only performs a shallow copy ( https://hibernate.atlassian.net/browse/HV-1946?atlOrigin=eyJpIjoiNGVhN2Fi... ) Hey Jay Gorrell ( https://hibernate.atlassian.net/secure/ViewProfile.jspa?accountId=622a122... ) thanks for reporting the issue and providing the reproducibles. The Path implementation deliberately is not creating deep copies for performance and resource usage reasons. While that’s so, there’s a problem you’ve reported. It comes from the fact that you are passing a null value as a nodeName into receiver.indexedValue(..). This results in a created path missing a container element node; you can see that by inspecting the nodes in the path or by calling a Node#getIndex() either on the node or nodeImpl in your test case. If you'd like to make it work on with the version of the validator you are using right now – you’d have to pass a nonnull node name. Keep in mind that that will change the string representation of the path (that’s if you care about how it looks). In the meantime, I’ll submit a patch that should address the problem. ( https://hibernate.atlassian.net/browse/HV-1946#add-comment?atlOrigin=eyJp... ) Add Comment ( https://hibernate.atlassian.net/browse/HV-1946#add-comment?atlOrigin=eyJp... ) Get Jira notifications on your phone! Download the Jira Cloud app for Android ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.atlassian.android.jira.... ) or iOS ( https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1006972087?pt=696495&ct=Em... ) This message was sent by Atlassian Jira (v1001.0.0-SNAPSHOT#100225- sha1:f83bc8f )