XSLT, 2nd Edition

Name

starts-with()

Determines whether the first argument string begins with the second argument.

Syntax

[1.0] boolean starts-with(string, string)
[2.0] xs:boolean starts-with(xs:string, xs:string)
[2.0] xs:boolean starts-with(xs:string, xs:string, $collation as xs:string)

Inputs

Two strings.

[2.0] In XSLT 2.0, there is an optional third argument—the name of a collation that specifies how strings are compared.

Output

Assuming both arguments are not zero-length strings, if the first string begins with the second, starts-with() returns the boolean value true; otherwise, it returns false. If the second string is a zero-length string, starts-with() returns true. If the first string and the second string are both zero-length strings, starts-with() returns true. If the first string is a zero-length string but the second string is not, starts-with() returns false.

Defined in

[1.0] XPath section 4.2, “String Functions.”

[2.0] XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators section 7.5, “Functions Based on Substring Matching.”

Example

We’ll use this sample XML document:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- favorites.xml -->
<list>
  <title>A few of my favorite albums</title>
  <listitem>A Love Supreme</listitem>
  <listitem>Beat Crazy</listitem>
  <listitem>Here Come the Warm Jets</listitem>
  <listitem>Kind of Blue</listitem>
  <listitem>London Calling</listitem>
  <listitem>Remain in Light</listitem>
  <listitem>The Joshua Tree</listitem>
  <listitem>The Indestructible Beat of Soweto</listitem>
</list>

This stylesheet outputs the ...