String matching without regex

Hi all,

For XML to HTML transformation I'd like to add the HTML <nobr> tag for each
table cell that contains currency values (or <td nowrap> as an alternative).
In my application currency values are values that always end with a .
followed by two digits.

[Test data]
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<test>
 <value>Hello World!</value>
 <value>CHF -1'125.25</value>
 <value>1'125.25</value>
 <value>125.25</value>
 <value>Hello World. Hello World. Hello World. Hello World. Hello World.
Hello World.</value>
</test>

Using modern XSLT/XPath I could achieve this with the following XSL using
regex:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format">
 <xsl:template match="test">
  <table>
   <tr>
       <xsl:for-each select="value">
     <td>
      <xsl:choose>
       <xsl:when test='matches(., ".*\.\d\d")'>
        <nobr>
         <xsl:value-of select="."/>
        </nobr>
       </xsl:when>
       <xsl:otherwise>
        <xsl:value-of select="."/>
       </xsl:otherwise>
      </xsl:choose>
     </td>
    </xsl:for-each>
   </tr>
  </table>
 </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>


How could I achieve the same using old-fashioned string functions such as
substring and the like?

Marcel Stvr
http://www.frightanic.com