Apply it to $old and $new at the time you declare the variables, then

    <xsl:variable name="f" select="translate(., '/', '\')"/>
    <xsl:value-of select="substring-before($f,$old)"/>
    <xsl:value-of select="$new"/>
    <xsl:value-of select="substring-after($f,$old)"/>

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul [mailto:pflists@xxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 07 October 2008 21:43
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re:  How to substitute a portion of the text 
> value of an element
> 
> The difficulty I guess is knowing when to apply the translate.
> 
> Ken's code above in the thread:
> 
>  <xsl:copy>
>    <xsl:value-of select="substring-before(.,$old)"/>
>    <xsl:value-of select="$new"/>
>    <xsl:value-of select="substring-after(.,$old)"/>
> </xsl:copy>
> 
> needs to have the substring-before work if the slashes in 
> $old and the slashes in the . are different. Perhaps I need 
> to first translate all occurrences to some canonical form 
> before I do the substring-before or substring-after test if 
> that is possible.
> 
> Paul
> 
> 
> On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 4:13 PM, Syd Bauman 
> <Syd_Bauman@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> Is there a function I can call to first convert the slashes to one 
> >> unified format before applying the substring?
> >
> > translate(.,'\','/')