# xsl:analyze-string

The `xsl:analyze-string` element is new in XSLT 2.0. It applies a regular expression to a supplied string value. The string is split into a sequence of substrings, each of which is classified as either a matching substring (if it matches the regular expression) or a non-matching substring (if it doesn't). The substrings are then processed individually: the matching substrings by a `xsl:matching-substring` element that appears as a child of the `xsl:analyze-string` instruction, the non-matching substrings by a similar `xsl:non-matching-substring` element. If either of these is omitted, the relevant substrings are not processed.

The element has three attributes: `select` is an XPath expression whose value is the string to be analyzed; `regex` is the regular expression (which may be given as an attribute value template), and `flags` provides one or more Perl-like flags to control the way in which regular expression matching is performed, for example the value "m" indicates multi-line mode.

When processing matching substrings, it is possible to call the `regex-group()` function to find the parts of the matching substring that matched particular parenthesized groups within the regular expression.

There are examples of this element in the XSLT 2.0 Working Draft.

Expand | Next