<riderchap@g...> wrote in message 
news:e70d57c8-210f-4bc4-96ee-0f83589ed4e0@l......
> Hi group,
> I am trying to write an XSL transform to take an XML as input and
> replace all single quotes ( ' ) with two single quotes ( '' ). The
> situation is I am only sure about the name of the root tag of my XML.
> Within the root tags I may have another tree of XML and I want to
> replace all single quotes with two single quotes.
>
> My input XML will be like <TheRootTag>Some XML string</TheRootTag>.
>
> For an example that causing me problem
> The input XML :
> <TheRootTag><InnerTag ID="12'3"> <Tag1>This 's a test</Tag1></
> InnerTag></TheRootTag>
>
> Note that there are two single quote in the string above "12'3" and
> "'s".
>
> In my XSL I take the the full XML "<InnerTag ID="12'3"> <Tag1>This 's
> a test</Tag1></InnerTag>"
> and uses the contains()  function to search for the single quote.
>
> Issue #1: The contains() function doesn't finds the single quote in
> "12'3".
>
> Then I use substring-before() function to get the part of the string
> before the single quote.
>
> Issue #2: The substring-before() function strips-off all the XML tags
> and just returns only the value parts. (so as substring-after() ).
>
> For example if pass "<InnerTag ID="12'3"> <Tag1>This 's a test</Tag1></
> InnerTag>" (call it variable $thestring) to substring-before()
> function like
> <xsl:copy-of select="substring-before($thestring, &apos;)"/>
>
> it will output only "This ", note that all the tags are gone. (See the
> bottom of the mail if you like to see  an outline of my XSL program.)
>
>
> My questions are
> 1. Is there a way to match the characters in the attribute value in an
> XML string passed to contains() and substring-before() / substring-
> after() functions.
> 2. Is there a way to get the substring with all the XML tags from an
> XML string passed to substring-before() and substring-after()
> functions.
>
> If its not possible I think I have to programaticaly parse into the
> XML and its attributes and do the replace of characters.
>
> Thank you for your time. Any helpful reply greatly appreciated.
>
> -Kannan
>
> Outline of my XSL. (I know this sample will only replace only one
> single quote).
>
> <xsl:template match="TheRootTag">
>    <xsl:variable name="theapos">&apos;</xsl:variable>
>    <xsl:variable name="thestring" select="."/>
>    <xsl:choose>
>      <xsl:when test="contains($thestring, $theapos)">
>          <xsl:copy-of select="substring-before($thestring, $theapos)"/
>>
>          <xsl:text>&apos;&apos;</xsl:text>
>          <xsl:copy-of select="substring-after($thestring, $theapos)"/
>>
>      </xsl:when>
>      <xsl:otherwise>
>        <xsl:copy-of select="$thestring"/>
>      </xsl:otherwise>
>    </xsl:choose>
>  </xsl:template>
I would use a version of the identity template and a recursive template to 
replace the quotes or better yet use XSLT 2.0 and the replace function. You 
can find a number of pre-written string replacement templates online.

-- 

Joe Fawcett (MVP - XML)
http://joe.fawcett.name