XPath query fails when "as" is a part of a path

[Stanislav Orlenko]

XPath query: /a/b/as
throws an error:
{

   - results: [ ],
   - total: 0,
   - success: false,
   - time: 0,
   - errorMessage: "Encountered "as" at line 1, column 16. Was expecting
   one of: <IntegerLiteral> ... <DecimalLiteral> ... <DoubleLiteral> ...
   <StringLiteral> ... "<?" ... "<?" ... <AxisChild> ... <AxisDescendant> ...
   <AxisParent> ... <AxisAttribute> ... <AxisSelf> ... <AxisDescendantOrSelf>
   ... <AxisAncestor> ... <AxisFollowingSibling> ... <AxisPrecedingSibling>
   ... <AxisFollowing> ... <AxisPreceding> ... <AxisAncestorOrSelf> ... "$"
   ... <ElementType> ... <AttributeType> ... <SchemaElementType> ...
   <SchemaAttributeType> ... <OrderedOpen> ... <UnorderedOpen> ...
   <ElementQNameLbrace> ... <AttributeQNameLbrace> ... <PINCNameLbrace> ...
   <PILbrace> ... <CommentLbrace> ... <ElementLbrace> ... <AttributeLbrace>
   ... <TextLbrace> ... "*" ... <NCNameColonStar> ... <StarColonNCName> ...
   "(" ... "@" ... <DocumentLpar> ... <DocumentLparForKindTest> ...
   <DocumentLbrace> ... <NodeLpar> ... <CommentLpar> ... <TextLpar> ...
   <ProcessingInstructionLpar> ... <ElementTypeForKindTest> ...
   <ElementTypeForDocumentTest> ... <AttributeTypeForKindTest> ...
   <SchemaElementTypeForKindTest> ... <SchemaElementTypeForDocumentTest> ...
   <SchemaAttributeTypeForKindTest> ... <ProcessingInstructionLparForKindTest>
   ... <TextLparForKindTest> ... <CommentLparForKindTest> ...
   <NodeLparForKindTest> ... "." ... ".." ... <QNameLpar> ... "<" ... "<" ...
   "<!--" ... "<!--" ... <QName> ... for statement: for $v in /a/b/as return
   $v"

}

That's jackrabbit 2.6.2 in Adobe CQ 5.6.1

If I understood correctly a XPath parser treats "as" as a reserved word. In
jackrabbit code I found this:

statement = "for $v in " + statement + " return $v";
// get parser
XPath parser;
synchronized (parsers) {
parser = (XPath) parsers.get(resolver);
if (parser == null) {
    parser = new XPath(new StringReader(statement));
    parsers.put(resolver, parser);
}
}

http://grepcode.com/file/repo1.maven.org/maven2/org.apache.jackrabbit/jackrabbit-spi-commons/2.6.2/org/apache/jackrabbit/spi/commons/query/xpath/XPathQueryBuilder.java#285

In linux I've tried to execute the same XPath code using xmllint and it
works:
$ xmllint --xpath '/a/b/as' test.html
<as>
as content
</as>

Any ideas what's wrong with jackrabbit when "as" is part of a path?

Adobe guy has confirmed the problem but hasn't provided any solutions.
Except using SQL-2 if a path contains "/as"

Thanks