> I'm trying to count the number of <P> tags withing a <![CDATA[ section.
>
> Doing this:
> <xsl:value-of select="string-length(.) - string-length(translate(.,
> '&lt;P&gt;', ''))"/>
>
> almost gets me there -- but counts each instance of <, P, and >
> separately.  Is there a way of searching for an *entire* string,
> rather than individual characters?

Hello Dan,

my approach is to use a recursive template:

<xsl:template match="element-with-cdata">
    <xsl:call-template name="string-count">
        <xsl:with-param name="string" select="."/>
        <xsl:with-param name="string-to-count" select="'&lt;P&gt;'"/>
    </xsl:call-template>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template name="string-count">
    <xsl:param name="string"/>
    <xsl:param name="string-to-count"/>
    <xsl:param name="count" select="0"/>
    <xsl:choose>
        <xsl:when test="contains($string, $string-to-count)">
            <xsl:call-template name="string-count">
                <xsl:with-param name="string"
select="substring-after($string, $string-to-count)"/>
                <xsl:with-param name="string-to-count"
select="$string-to-count"/>
                <xsl:with-param name="count" select="$count + 1"/>
            </xsl:call-template>
        </xsl:when>
        <xsl:otherwise>
            <xsl:value-of select="$count"/>
        </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>

(untested)

This template tests whether the string contains the string to count. When
this is true, the string is shortened til the first occurence of the
string-to-count, the counter is incremented and the template calls itself
again. If string-to-count is not more contained in string then the value of
the count will be returned.

But a question I would ask earlier: Do you really need CDATA? Why not using
"normal" XML? If it is poor HTML, you can use Tidy to transform it to
XHTML/XML. Then counting nodes would be much easier than string
manipulation.

Regards,

Joerg


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