XSLT, 2nd Edition

Name

string-length()

Returns the number of characters in the string passed in as the argument to this function. If no argument is specified, the context node is converted to a string and the length of that string is returned.

Syntax

[1.0] number string-length(string?)
[2.0] xs:integer string-length()
[2.0] xs:integer string-length(string?)

Inputs

An optional string.

Output

The number of characters defined in the string (an xs:integer in XSLT 2.0). If no string is specified as an argument, the context node is used. In other words, string-length() and string-length(.) are equivalent.

[2.0] If the string is the empty sequence, the value 0 is returned.

Defined in

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

[2.0] XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 section 7.4, “Functions on String Values.”

Example

The following example demonstrates the results of invoking the string-length() function against various argument types. Here’s the XML document we’ll use for our example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- chocolate.xml -->
<report month="8" year="2006">
  <title>Chocolate bar sales</title>
  <brand>
    <name>Lindt</name>
    <units>27408</units>
  </brand>
  <brand>
    <name>Callebaut</name>
    <units>8203</units>
  </brand>
  <brand>
    <name>Valrhona</name>
    <units>22101</units>
  </brand>
  <brand>
    <name>Perugina</name>
    <units>14336</units>
  </brand>
  <brand>
    <name>Ghirardelli</name>
    <units>19268</units>
  </brand>
</report>

We’ll process this document with the following stylesheet:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- string-length.xsl --> <xsl:stylesheet ...