Default values for missing elements

Hello,

I need to produce some fixed format files from XML input. This means that I have
to put in default values in place of optional elements missing from the input
XML.

The construct I am using (in about 20 places in my transformation) is:

   <xsl:choose>
      <xsl:when test="optional-element"><xsl:value-of
   select="optional-element"/></xsl:when>
      <xsl:otherwise>default-value</xsl:otherwise>
   </xsl:choose>

This works, but seems to run slowly. I am using Xalan 1.0.

Does anyone know of a better (or faster) way to do this?

Regards,

John




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