XML date transformation problem

Question

HI Gentlemen,
I really do not know, why my XSLT functions behave so confused. I have an XML instance with several date fields in the form of YYYY-MM-DD, and YYYY-MM-DD.. (the second part of the date span is optional). For the German user I have to translate them into DD.MM.YYYY notation. Here is the code segment from my XSL stylesheet--the original date is decomposed and then again compiled into one unit. It works fine with the YYYY and DD portions, however it returns bad values for MM (being positions 5 and 6 after removing the minus signs.) Can anybody tell me if it is an Oracle bug or my fault? Only the middle positions are wrong. See the results after the code segment.
<!-- ************************** Gültigkeit ************************** -->
<a name="1"/>
<h4><xsl:text>1. Gültigkeit</xsl:text></h4>
<table>
  <xsl:for-each select="pe:gueltigkeit">
<xsl:variable name="von_XML" select="substring-before(@V, '..')"/>
<xsl:variable name="von" select="translate($von_XML, '-', '')"/>
<xsl:variable name="von_TT" select="substring($von,7,8)"/>
<xsl:variable name="von_MM" select="substring($von,5,6)"/>
<xsl:variable name="von_JJJJ" select="substring($von,1,4)"/>
<xsl:variable name="von_DE" select="concat($von_TT, '.', $von_MM, '.', $von_JJJJ)"/>
    <tr>
      <td>von...bis</td>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="@V"/></td>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="$von_XML"/></td>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="$von_TT"/></td>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="$von_MM"/></td>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="$von_JJJJ"/></td>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="$von_DE"/></td>
    </tr>
  </xsl:for-each>
</table>
<br/>And the results as displayed by a browser:
|von...bis|1995-08-23..|19950823|23|0823|1995|23.0823.1995|
-----------------------------------------------------------The minus signs were only removed because I experienced that it returns a messy output of minuses and digits.
Thank you for your assistance in advance.
Kind regards:
Miklos HERBOLY
Edited by: mh**** on Aug 1, 2011 7:13 AM
Edited by: mh**** on Aug 1, 2011 7:15 AM

Answer 1

Hi,
Can anybody tell me if it is an Oracle bug or my fault?Actually, your fault ;)
The third argument of the substring function is not a position but a length.
http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath/#function-substring
So I guess this is what you're looking for :
<xsl:variable name="von_TT" select="substring($von,7,2)"/>
<xsl:variable name="von_MM" select="substring($von,5,2)"/>
<xsl:variable name="von_JJJJ" select="substring($von,1,4)"/>