Manage flags in xslt? -

all, searching in list of fields has type clob , writing separed comma [field1, field2, ... fieldn]

my problem how identify first matched field write without comma ( can't use position() because first field matched can first of list or last of list)

i want make algorithm in xslt,

variable is_first = true;  if(is_first) {      smthng;      isfirst = false; } 

actually not possible make in xslt since variable immutable. there workarounds have specify need in more details.

edit:

if input string values separated commas...

<xsl:variable name="inputstring" select="'field1,field2,field3a,field4,field3b'" /> 

... use tokenize() functions...

<xsl:variable name="tokenized" select="tokenize($inputstring, ',')" /> 

... , select items corresponding condition

<!-- select item corresponding condition (e.g. contains 3). take first 1 if there several such items --> <xsl:value-of select="$tokenized[contains(., '3')][1]" /> 

edit2:

you can use separator attribute of xsl:value-of (xslt 2.0) output of delimited values.

assuming following variable

<xsl:variable name="list">     <item>first</item>     <item>second</item>     <item>third</item> </xsl:variable> 

this <xsl:value-of select="$list/item" separator="," /> makes desired output first,second,third