Path alternatives

| combines alternative paths and deduplicates equal complete paths with equal exposed bindings for each input row. |+| retains overlapping occurrences.

MATCH p = (a {name: 'Alice'})-[:Knows]->(b)
        | (a {name: 'Alice'})-[:Knows]->(b)
RETURN b.name AS destination;

The duplicated alternative still returns Bob once. Replacing | with |+| returns two occurrences.

Branches align variables by name and pad absent bindings with typed nulls. Incompatible element kinds or group/singleton exposures are rejected. Equal incoming rows remain separate; deduplication does not collapse the entire input table.

A variable absent from one branch is conditional. Its implicit reuse inside the same MATCH is restricted, but it can appear in expressions or in a later MATCH. See questioned paths for another source of conditional bindings.