# xsl:analyze-string

The `xsl:analyze-string` element is new in XSLT 2.0. It applies a regular expression to a supplied string value. The string is split into a sequence of substrings, each of which is classified as either a matching substring (if it matches the regular expression) or a non-matching substring (if it doesn't). The substrings are then processed individually: the matching substrings by a `xsl:matching-substring` element that appears as a child of the `xsl:analyze-string` instruction, the non-matching substrings by a similar `xsl:non-matching-substring` element. If either of these is omitted, the relevant substrings are not processed.

The element has three attributes: `select` is an XPath expression whose value is the string to be analyzed; `regex` is the regular expression (which may be given as an attribute value template), and `flags` provides one or more Perl-like flags to control the way in which regular expression matching is performed, for example the value "m" indicates multi-line mode.

When processing matching substrings, it is possible to call the `regex-group()` function to find the parts of the matching substring that matched particular parenthesized groups within the regular expression.

There are examples of this element in the XSLT 2.0 Working Draft.

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