Whitespace

Jeni Tennison

Easier would be to use the replace() function in XPath 2.0:

  <xsl:value-of select="replace(text(), '%20', ' ')" />

You only need to use <xsl:analyze-string> if you want to do further manipulation of the matching (or non-matching) strings.

Evan Lenz

There is one notable exception to this--whitespace character references other than #x20 (space) in attribute values, namely #xD, #xA, and #x9.

"Note that if the unnormalized attribute value contains a character reference to a white space character other than space (#x20), the normalized value contains the referenced character itself (#xD, #xA or #x9). This contrasts with the case where the unnormalized value contains a white space character (not a reference), which is replaced with a space character (#x20) in the normalized value..."[1]

For example, using a new XSLT 2.0 construct, we can see the difference in behavior very clearly:

<xsl:value-of select="(1,2,3)" separator="
"/>

will output:

1 2 3

whereas this:

<xsl:value-of select="(1,2,3)" separator="&#xA;"/>

will output:

1
2
3

In the first case, the XML parser reads the attribute value as the space character #x20 (according to attribute value normalization rules), and in the second example the XML parser reads the attribute value as the line feed character #xA. Note that serialization algorithms are also required to make this distinction in order to correctly round-trip attribute values.

[1] [1]

David Carlisle

a) strip off leading WS, retain trailing WS, and normalize the rest

<xsl:variable name="x" select="concat(.,'!@@@!')"/>
<xsl:value-of select="substring-before(normalize-space($x),'!@@@!')"/>

b) retain leading WS, strip off trailing WS, normalize the rest

<xsl:variable name="x" select="concat('!@@@!',.)"/>
<xsl:value-of select="substring-after(normalize-space($x),'!@@@!')"/>

c) retain leading and trailing WS, normalize the rest

<xsl:variable name="x" select="concat('!+++!.,'!@@@!')"/>
<xsl:value-of select="substring-after(substring-before(normalize-space($x),'!@@@!'),!+++!')"/>