[xsl] A beautiful way to populate a variable with N blanks?

["Roger L Costello costello@xxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Folks,

$N contains an integer.

$blanks is a string variable. The string is to consist of $N blanks (space
characters).

Below is one way to populate $blanks. It's an awful solution. Is there a
beautiful (simple) solution?

<xsl:variable name="tmp" as="xs:string+">
    <xsl:sequence select="''" />
    <xsl:sequence select="for $i in 1 to $N return (' ')"/>
</xsl:variable>

<xsl:variable name="blanks" as="xs:string">
    <xsl:value-of select="$tmp" separator=""/>
</xsl:variable>