Thanks Pankaj, its working fine now.

Thanks
Srinivasan
  

-----Original Message-----
From: pankaj.c@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:pankaj.c@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2010 4:27 PM
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re:  selecting a element without it's child element

Try

<xsl:variable name="filename"><xsl:value-of 
select="book/title/text()[1]"/></xsl:variable>

--Pankaj