string-range(node-set,substring,index,length)
A string range points to an occurrence of a specified string, or a substring of a given string in the text (not markup) of the document.
string-range()
takes as arguments a node set to search and a substring to
search for.
string-range() returns a node set containing one range for each
non-overlapping match to the string.
By default, the range returned starts before the first matched character and encompasses all the matched characters.
You can also provide optional index and length arguments indicating how many characters after the match the range should start and how many characters after the start the range should continue.
For example, this XPointer finds all occurrences of the string "Harold":
xpointer(string-range(/,"Harold"))
You can change the first argument to specify what nodes you want
to look in. For example, this XPointer finds all occurrences of
the string "Harold" in NAME elements:
xpointer(string-range(//NAME,"Harold"))
String ranges may have node tests. Thus this XPointer finds only the first occurrence of the string "Harold" in the document:
xpointer(string-range(/,"Harold")[position()=1])
This targets the position immediately preceding the word Harold
in Charles Walter Harold's NAME element. This is not
the same as pointing at the entire NAME element as an
element-based selector would do.
A third numeric argument targets a particular position in the string. For example, this targets the point immediately following the first occurrence of the string "Harold" because Harold has six letters:
xpointer(string-range(/,"Harold",6)[position()=1])
An optional fourth argument specifies the number of characters to select. For example, this URI selects the "old" from the first occurrence of the entire string "Harold":
xpointer(string-range(/,"Harold",4,3)[position()=1])
When matching strings, case is considered. All white space is condensed to a single space. Markup characters are ignored.