> I am using a count function to count th enumber of <title> 
> tgas in an xml 
> file which contain a certain starting letter.
> e.g. $alph = 'A'
> <xsl:variable name="countletter" select="count(number of 
> titles with a 
> starting letter of a)"/>
> <xsl:if test="($countletter > 0)">
> <p><xsl:value-of select="$alph"/></p>
> </xsl:if>
> 
> How would i write the test case for the xsl:if?
> would u do some sort of string comparison like 
> not(starts-with($countletter, 
> '0'))??
> 
> i can't use keys as the xml  is coming from multiple files. 
> cheers james

If all you want to do is check if there is a <title> element with the
first text node that starts with 'a' then you can use:

 <xsl:if test="starts-with(//title, 'a')">
   ...
 </xsl:if>

cheers
andrew