[xsl] Re: Spam:[xsl] RE: String manipulation in XSLT

[JBryant@xxxxxxxxx]

It seems to be a common misconception that people think XSLT is about 
manipulating text. It is about manipulating XML, which is a structured way 
of storing information.

XSLT 1 doesn't have much support for string manipulation, because XSLT 1 
is really about manipulating XML and no one perceived much need for string 
manipulation. XSLT 2 has far greater string manipulation ability because 
it became apparent that those features were useful to a lot of people.

If there's any way you can move to XSLT 2.0, some of your frustration 
might go away (of course, you might be frustrated in new ways, too).

Jay Bryant
Bryant Communication Services
(presently consulting at Synergistic Solution Technologies)





"Arun Manta" <arunm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
10/20/2005 11:11 AM
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Spam:[xsl] RE: String manipulation in XSLT






I have a string of the form ?abc.def.ghi? (java namespace ) where 
?abc.def? is the package name and ?ghi? is the class name.
I need to extract these two from the complete string : ?abc.def.ghi?  
-------? ?abc.def?  + ?ghi?

In java this would take about 1-2 lines of code, but in XSLT I cannot 
figure out a way to do it without writing tons of code.
Why is the support for string manipulation and regular expressions 
non-existent in XSLT, when XML is all about text ( more than java etc.. 
)??

I?m constantly frustrated by trying to write little templates to do these 
simple things like splitting a string etc.

TIA