A static way to do this (even in XPath 1.0) is when you know an upper bound
for N.

Say N <= 1000,

then you  have a variable:
<xsl:variable name="longBlanks" select="'           '" /> <!-- 1000 spaces
there -->

Then we construct any needed such value simply as:

substring($longBlanks, 1, $N)

Thanks,
Dimitre

On Fri, Feb 24, 2023 at 6:43 AM Roger L Costello costello@xxxxxxxxx <
xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> $N contains an integer.
>
> $blanks is a string variable. The string is to consist of $N blanks (space
> characters).
>
> Below is one way to populate $blanks. It's an awful solution. Is there a
> beautiful (simple) solution?
>
> <xsl:variable name="tmp" as="xs:string+">
>     <xsl:sequence select="''" />
>     <xsl:sequence select="for $i in 1 to $N return (' ')"/>
> </xsl:variable>
>
> <xsl:variable name="blanks" as="xs:string">
>     <xsl:value-of select="$tmp" separator=""/>
> </xsl:variable>