xslt-lab/site/content/xslt/functions/xpath-unparsed-text-lines.md

title, description, date, version, versionLabel, category, syntax, tags

title	description	date	version	versionLabel	category	syntax	tags
unparsed-text-lines()	Reads a text file from a URI and returns its lines as a sequence of strings, one item per line.	2026-04-18T00:00:00Z	2.0	XSLT 2.0	node function	unparsed-text-lines(uri, encoding?)	xslt reference xpath xslt2

Description

unparsed-text-lines() retrieves a text resource and returns each line as a separate xs:string item in a sequence. Line endings (\r\n, \n, \r) are removed from each item. An empty trailing line produced by a final newline is not included.

This is more convenient than unparsed-text() followed by tokenize() when you want to iterate over lines directly.

This function is part of XPath 3.0 but is supported by Saxon 9.x+ with XSLT 2.0 stylesheets.

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
uri	xs:string?	Yes	The URI of the text resource.
encoding	xs:string	No	Character encoding (e.g., "UTF-8").

Return value

xs:string* — a sequence of strings, one per line, or the empty sequence if the URI argument is the empty sequence.

Examples

Parse a CSV file line by line

Stylesheet (reads data.csv):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0"
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <table>
      <xsl:for-each select="unparsed-text-lines('data.csv')[position() gt 1]">
        <xsl:variable name="fields" select="tokenize(., ',')"/>
        <row>
          <id><xsl:value-of select="$fields[1]"/></id>
          <name><xsl:value-of select="$fields[2]"/></name>
          <value><xsl:value-of select="$fields[3]"/></value>
        </row>
      </xsl:for-each>
    </table>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Output (for data.csv with header + 2 rows):

<table>
  <row><id>1</id><name>alpha</name><value>100</value></row>
  <row><id>2</id><name>beta</name><value>200</value></row>
</table>

Count non-empty lines in a file

Stylesheet:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0"
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:output method="text"/>

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:value-of select="count(unparsed-text-lines('readme.txt')[normalize-space()])"/>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Notes

• Line endings are stripped from each returned string.
• Unlike tokenize(unparsed-text(...), '\n'), a trailing newline does not produce a spurious empty item.
• Use unparsed-text-available() first if the file may not exist.
• Formally part of XPath 3.0; available in Saxon 9.x+ with XSLT 2.0 stylesheets.

See also

• unparsed-text()
• unparsed-text-available()