How to search for <, >, etc. in a string?

Hello,

I was hoping you all could shed some light on a pretty basic issue I'm facing.  It's probably one of those "Sure, here's the answer!" or "No, no way" types.

I have XML that contains some CDATA:

<string>
	<![CDATA[<u>Link containing a & character</u>]]>
</string>

I'd like to strip out the <u> and </u>, but only if they exist in the CDATA.  To that end, I've used the string functions.  An example of this is:

<xsl:when test="starts-with($linkTextUnStripped, '<u>')">
	<xsl:value-of select="substring($linkTextUnStripped, 4)" />
</xsl:when>

The problem is the use of '<' and '>' in the second parameter of the starts-with function.  I tried replacing them with &lt; and &gt; but I believe that it is then literally looking for '&' followed by 'l' by 't' by ';' and soforth.

Is there a way to specify <, >, ", etc. in such cases?

Thank you for your time,
   Brian Young


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