Forcing String Length?

["Rebecca Lundberg" <rlundberg@xxxxxxxx>]

My question for the day is this:

 

Is there away to force string length? For example, my output contains a string that must contain 10 characters but the XML source is not guaranteed to supply that number of characters. 

 

Is there a better, shorter way than doing a long series using <xsl:choose>, testing string-length=10, string-length=9 etc and filling in the appropriate number of spaces (or 0's if it's a number)

 

My stylesheet HUGE because I have so many places where this must be done. It's working but I've got to find ways to trim it down.

 

Help!

 

Thanks,

Rebecca