Re: Fixed-length String Output

Deirdre,

A very similar question came up just recently. You should check out XPath's
string-handling functions.

Something like
<xsl:value-of select="substring(concat($string, '            '), 1, 12))"/>

always gives you a string twelve characters long, either the first twelve
characters of $string, or $string padded out with spaces. Variables can be
also be useful to make things easier to read, reuse and maintain -- for
example
<xsl:variable name="spacex12" select="'            '"/>
and then
<xsl:value-of select="substring(concat($string, $spacex12), 1, 12))"/>

Have fun,
Wendell

At 04:27 PM 10/4/00 +0100, you wrote:
>
>
>Hi,
>
>I am trying to transform an incoming XML message to a format that will be
>acceptable to our existing software package.  However the existing package
>excepts data on a fixed-length basis.  This is the way we wish to continue.
>
>I was wondering is there a way to force the output of select statement to
>take up a certain amount of space.  Not all of the elements will be
>numbers.  What I need is something like the format-number function but for
>strings.  I taught maybe there might be an attribute in value-of that would
>do it, but there doesn't appear to be. Is there anything currently
>available in XSLT that would do this for me? I am using the Xalan
>processor.
>
>Thanks for the help I have received so far.  I have ordered a copy of "XSLT
>Programmer's Reference".  This hopefully will enable me to answer my own
>questions.
>
>Thanks again,
>Deirdre O'Brien


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