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<title>starts-with() Function</title>
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<td valign="top" class="NAME">starts-with() Function</td>
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Determines if the first argument string begins with the second argument. </td></tr>
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<td colspan="2" class="TITLE">Inputs</td>
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<p>Two strings. </p>
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<td colspan="2" class="TITLE">Output</td>
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<p>If the first string begins with the second, <span class="LITERAL">starts-with()</span> returns the boolean value <span class="LITERAL">true</span>; otherwise it returns <span class="LITERAL">false</span>.</p>
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<td colspan="2" class="TITLE">Defined in</td>
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<p>XPath section 4.2, String Functions. </p>
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<td colspan="2" class="TITLE">Example</td>
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<p>We'll use this sample XML document:</p>
<span class="PROGRAMLISTING"><pre>
&lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;
&lt;list&gt;
  &lt;title&gt;A few of my favorite albums&lt;/title&gt;
  &lt;listitem&gt;A Love Supreme&lt;/listitem&gt;
  &lt;listitem&gt;Beat Crazy&lt;/listitem&gt;
  &lt;listitem&gt;Here Come the Warm Jets&lt;/listitem&gt;
  &lt;listitem&gt;Kind of Blue&lt;/listitem&gt;
  &lt;listitem&gt;London Calling&lt;/listitem&gt;
  &lt;listitem&gt;Remain in Light&lt;/listitem&gt;
  &lt;listitem&gt;The Joshua Tree&lt;/listitem&gt;
  &lt;listitem&gt;The Indestructible Beat of Soweto&lt;/listitem&gt;
&lt;/list&gt;</pre></span>
<p>This stylesheet outputs contents of all <span class="LITERAL">&lt;listitem&gt;</span> elements that begin with the string "The":</p>
<span class="PROGRAMLISTING"><pre>
&lt;?xml version="1.0"?&gt;
&lt;xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"&gt;

  &lt;xsl:output method="text"/&gt;

  &lt;xsl:variable name="newline"&gt;
&lt;xsl:text&gt;
&lt;/xsl:text&gt;
  &lt;/xsl:variable&gt;

  &lt;xsl:template match="/"&gt;
    &lt;xsl:value-of select="$newline"/&gt;
    &lt;xsl:for-each select="list/listitem"&gt;
      &lt;xsl:if test="starts-with(., 'The')"&gt;
        &lt;xsl:value-of select="position()"/&gt;
        &lt;xsl:text&gt;. &lt;/xsl:text&gt;
        &lt;xsl:value-of select="."/&gt;
        &lt;xsl:value-of select="$newline"/&gt;
      &lt;/xsl:if&gt;
    &lt;/xsl:for-each&gt;
  &lt;/xsl:template&gt;

&lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;</pre></span>
<p>Our stylesheet generates this result:</p>
<span class="PROGRAMLISTING"><pre>

7. The Joshua Tree
8. The Indestructible Beat of Soweto
</pre></span>
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