xpath - XSLT string replace

Question

I don't really know XSL but I need to fix this code, I have reduced it to make it simpler.
I am getting this error

Invalid XSLT/XPath function

on this line

<xsl:variable name="text" select="replace($text,'a','b')"/>

This is the XSL

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
    xmlns:inm="http://www.inmagic.com/webpublisher/query" version="1.0">
    <xsl:output method="text" encoding="UTF-8" />

    <xsl:preserve-space elements="*" />
    <xsl:template match="text()" />

    <xsl:template match="mos">
        <xsl:apply-templates />

        <xsl:for-each select="mosObj">
          'Notes or subject' 
           <xsl:call-template
                name="rem-html">
                <xsl:with-param name="text" select="SBS_ABSTRACT" />
            </xsl:call-template>
        </xsl:for-each>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template name="rem-html">
        <xsl:param name="text" />
        <xsl:variable name="text" select="replace($text, 'a', 'b')" />
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Can anyone tell me what's wrong with it?

Answer 1

replace isn't available for XSLT 1.0.

Codesling has a template for string-replace you can use as a substitute for the function:

<xsl:template name="string-replace-all">
    <xsl:param name="text" />
    <xsl:param name="replace" />
    <xsl:param name="by" />
    <xsl:choose>
        <xsl:when test="$text = '' or $replace = ''or not($replace)" >
            <!-- Prevent this routine from hanging -->
            <xsl:value-of select="$text" />
        </xsl:when>
        <xsl:when test="contains($text, $replace)">
            <xsl:value-of select="substring-before($text,$replace)" />
            <xsl:value-of select="$by" />
            <xsl:call-template name="string-replace-all">
                <xsl:with-param name="text" select="substring-after($text,$replace)" />
                <xsl:with-param name="replace" select="$replace" />
                <xsl:with-param name="by" select="$by" />
            </xsl:call-template>
        </xsl:when>
        <xsl:otherwise>
            <xsl:value-of select="$text" />
        </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>

invoked as:

<xsl:variable name="newtext">
    <xsl:call-template name="string-replace-all">
        <xsl:with-param name="text" select="$text" />
        <xsl:with-param name="replace" select="a" />
        <xsl:with-param name="by" select="b" />
    </xsl:call-template>
</xsl:variable>

On the other hand, if you literally only need to replace one character with another, you can call translate which has a similar signature. Something like this should work fine:

<xsl:variable name="newtext" select="translate($text,'a','b')"/>

Also, note, in this example, I changed the variable name to "newtext", in XSLT variables are immutable, so you can't do the equivalent of $foo = $foo like you had in your original code.