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>