XML/XSLT stylesheet/starts with

starts-with function

File: Data.xml
<poem>
  <verse>line 1</verse>
  <verse>
    line 2
  </verse>
</poem>
File: Transform.xslt
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
  version="1.0">
  <xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="no" />
  
  <xsl:template match="verse">
    <xsl:value-of select="concat("length: ",string-length(.))" />
    <xsl:if test="contains(.,"light")">
      <xsl:text>light: yes!</xsl:text>
    </xsl:if>
    <xsl:if test="starts-with(.,"Seest")">
      <xsl:text>Yes, starts with "Seest"</xsl:text>
    </xsl:if>
    <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)" />
    <xsl:value-of select="translate(.,"abcde","ABCD")" />
  </xsl:template>
  
</xsl:stylesheet>
Output:

  length: 6line 1lin 1
  length: 13line 2
    lin 2