Substring has two forms:

  substring(value,start)
  substring(value,start,length)

Your usage of <<substring($idvalue,1)>> is grabbing the whole
string. Since $idval is just the content of <id>,

  <xsl:variable name="idvalue" select="id"/>

what is the point of this processing?

Try the attached example and tie future questions to what a
realistic sample of the XML document you are processing looks 
like.

Regards,

Dan

File:Samways4May2001.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="Samways4May2001.xsl"?>

<root>
 <employee>
  <id>1_1</id>
  <name>Susan</name>
 </employee>
 <employee>
  <id>1_2</id>
  <name>Mary</name>
 </employee>
</root>

File:Samways4May2001.xsl
<?xml version="1.0"?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
   
 <xsl:template match="/">
  <xsl:apply-templates select="root"/>
 </xsl:template>
 
 <xsl:template match="root">
  <xsl:apply-templates select="employee"/>
 </xsl:template>
 
 <xsl:template match="employee">
  <div align="left">
   <xsl:value-of select="id"/> -
   <xsl:value-of select="name"/> - 
   <xsl:value-of select="position()"/>
  </div>
 </xsl:template>
   
</xsl:stylesheet>

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