I have the following string:

string = 'http://aaa/bbb/ccc/ddd/eee/fff/ggggg'

From the above string i need the string 'ddd' alone in a variable. How can we make use of XSLT 1.0 string function to get 'ddd' string alone?

You need to say what it is that makes the string 'ddd' recognizable. For example, do you want the third component of the URI path, or the last-but-two component, or the one that follows 'ccc', or the one that is equal to 'ddd'?

Giving one example of an input and output does not constitute a specification.

__________________
Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 Programmer\'s Reference

Let me put in this way,
string = 'http://aaa/bbb/ccc/ddd/eee/fff/ggggg'

in the above string , i want the fourth component 'ddd' of the url. How do i extract 'ddd' alone.

Or, i want the string between the 5th occurence of '/' and 6th occurence of '/'

substring-after($x, '//') gives you the string after the '//', so

substring-after(substring-after($x,'//'), '/') gives you the content starting with 'bbb'.

Apply that a couple more times and you get the content starting with 'ddd'.

Then substring-before(..., '/') applied to that result truncates the string at the next '/'.

Cumbersome, yes. So move to XSLT 2.0 if you can.

__________________
Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 Programmer\'s Reference