An xslt variable has the following format: "ab.cd.ef.MyTypeName" I need to insert a constant substring "ZZZ" just before "MyTypeName" so that it has the following format: "ab.cd.ef.ZZZ.MyTypeName" What precedes "MyTypeName" is completely arbitrary, but there is never anything after MyTypeName. I had looked at one of the XML books, where they used a "fibonacci example" to perform recursive manipulations. I was wondering if there was an easier way of performing this conversion. Any help would be appreciated. by the way, I don't believe I'm using the new XPATH 2, although I'm not really sure so I can't use those extended string facilities. Juanita