Re: XPath expression to extract the hour offset from

Hi Folks,

I have strings that express time offset from UTC. Here are representative

UTC+5
UTC+1(+2DT)
UTC-11
UTC+4:30
UTC+9:30(+10:30DT)

In areas where daylight savings time is observed, the daylight savings time

Some offsets have both an hour and minute. The minute portion is after the

I need to extract the hour offset. So for the above examples, I need to

+5
+1
-11
+4
+9

This XPath expression seems to do the job:

let $time := "UTC+9:30(+10:30DT)" return
     if (contains($time,'(')) then
         let $part := substring-after(substring-before($time,'('),'UTC')

             if (contains($part,':')) then
                 substring-before($part,':')
             else
                 $part
     else
         let $part := substring-after($time,'UTC') return
             if (contains($part,':')) then
                 substring-before($part,':')
             else
                 $part

Is there a better (simpler, shorter) XPath expression for doing this?

B  analyze-string(., '^UTC([+-][0-9]{1,2})')/*:match/*:group[@nr =
1]/string()