RE: text output and space padding

Yes - this is perfectly doable in XSLT... try something along the lines
of:

<xsl:template match="*">
	<xsl:value-of select=".">
	<xsl:call-template name="padMe">
		<xsl:with-param name="padTo">30</xsl:with-param>
		<xsl:with-param name="i"><xsl:value-of
select="string-length(.)"/></xsl:with-param>
	</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template name="padMe">
	<xsl:parameter name="padTo"/>
	<xsl:parameter name="i"/>

	<!-- pad 1 space here (can't remember the correct ascii code,
off hand... -->

	<!-- now call the template again, recursively, if we are still
less than the pad value... -->
	<xsl:if test="$padMe > $i">
		<xsl:call-template name="padMe">
			<xsl:with-param name="padTo"><xsl:value-of
select="$padTo"/></xsl:with-param>
			<xsl:with-param name="i"><xsl:value-of
select="$i + 1"/></xsl:with-param>
		<xsl:call-template>
	</xsl:if>
</xsl:template>


this is equivalent to saying:

for (i, i < padMe, i++), and starting the loop at the length of the
string, add a padding space.

Ben



> -----Original Message-----
> From: angie.tong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:angie.tong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: 30 May 2001 16:34
> To: XSL-List@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  text output and space padding
> 
> 
> I'm new to XML and XSL technologies so please give me a hand 
> here.  I have
> been researching and reading references on XSL and couldn't 
> find a way to
> do this.  I need to read an XML file and generate a flat file 
> with fixed
> length fields for mainframe.  So that means I need to write 
> data padded
> with space if the data does not fill up to the required length.  So
> something like this:
> 
>                COMPANY A                COMPANY B             
>        20000
> 
> will need to be generated from an XML file for example:
> 
> <policies>
>   <sender_info>COMPANY A</sender_info>
>   <carrier_info>COMPANY B</carrier_info>
>   <amount>200.00</amount>
> </policies>
> 
> The trick here is that the trailing space after each field might be
> different depending on the length of the data itself.  I thought about
> writing a "function" to output spaces depending on the 
> parameter input.
> But then I will need to do a for loop with index like in C:
> for (i=0;i<30;i++)
> which I know it cannot be done in XSL.  Any ideas?
> 
> Angie
> 
> 
>  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
> 
> 

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