String functions

• XPath has a number of basic functions for working with strings:

  • starts-with(main_string, prefix_string)

  • contains(containing_string, contained_string)

  • substring(string, offset, length)

  • substring-before(string, marker-string)

  • substring-after(string, marker-string)

  • string-length(string)

  • normalize(string)

  • translate(string, replaced_text, replacement_text)

  • concat(string1, string2, ...)

• The strings these operate on are generally the values of nodes

• These may be part of any select expression, but are most commonly used in xsl:value-of.

• XPath does not, however, provide full Perl or POSIX regular expressions.

• XSLT/XPath 2.0 might add these