Formatting scientific number representation in xsl

Question

I have the following value in my XML -1.8959581529998104E-4. I want to format this to the exact number it should be using XSL to give me -0.000189595815299981.

format-number(-1.8959581529998104E-4,'0.000000;-0.000000') gives me NaN.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

XSLT 1.0 does not have support for scientific notation.

This: number('-1.8959581529998104E-4') Result: NaN

This: number('-0.000189595815299981') Result: -0.000189595815299981

XSLT 2.0 has support for scientific notation

This: number('-1.8959581529998104E-4') Result: -0.000189595815299981

EDIT: A very simple XSLT 1.0 workaround:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:template match="number[substring-after(.,'E')]">
        <xsl:variable name="vExponent" select="substring-after(.,'E')"/>
        <xsl:variable name="vMantissa" select="substring-before(.,'E')"/>
        <xsl:variable name="vFactor"
             select="substring('100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000',
                               1, substring($vExponent,2) + 1)"/>
        <xsl:choose>
            <xsl:when test="starts-with($vExponent,'-')">
                <xsl:value-of select="$vMantissa div $vFactor"/>
            </xsl:when>
            <xsl:otherwise>
                <xsl:value-of select="$vMantissa * $vFactor"/>
            </xsl:otherwise>
        </xsl:choose>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

With this input:

<number>-1.8959581529998104E-4</number>

Output:

-0.00018959581529998104