String expressions in XSL

[Attila Torcsvari]

XSLers,

in my XML file I have
<subclass id=A01B>
...
<ref to="A01B001/00"/>
...
</subclass>
...
<subclass id=A01C>
...
<ref to="A01B001/00"/>
...
</subclass>

I have to generate the following HTML sequences:

from the first reference:
<A href="@A01B001/00">1/00</A>

...because I am in subclass A01B, thus the user should see only
1/00
which is sufficient for the user to recognize the referred location.

from the second reference:
<A href="@A01B001/00">A01B 1/00</A>
...because it is in another subclass, thus the user _must_ now that the
reference points to another subclass.

(The "@" designates "late-bound reference", used by another tool which
will resolve it a separate step.)

I have got about 800.000 of such references in about 20*15 MB XML data.

Have I got in XSL _any_ chance to generate these sequences?

I guess _no_. There seems to be _no_ string expression language neither
for patterns nor for "value-of".

Do I have to contaminate my source XML code with redundant data
(which I do now but I do not like it)
or
should I generate temporal XML files in Java, which is a neverending
story due to the sizes of the files
or
is it planned that at least regexp patterns will appear in XSL
or
is there a chance that there will be _again_ ECMAScript in XSL?
or
is there any XML transformation tool which is less painful to use than a
set of Java/Python/C/AWK/Perl programs?

Samples can be reached at http://www.arcanum.com/patclass/index.htm
These files were generated with proprietary tools which I plan to change
to XML tools, if I can.

I guess my problems are not too special.

Thanks for help.

Attila Torcsvari
Arcanum Development

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