Count leading spaces using xpath expression

Hi,
I am looking for a way to count the number of leading spaces in the text of 
an element.  I have written the following template which does this:
        <xsl:template name="countIndent">
                <xsl:param name="str" />
                <xsl:param name="leadingSpaces" select="0"/>
                <xsl:choose>
			<xsl:when test="(string-length($str) != 0) and 
(normalize-space(substring($str, 1, 1)) = '' )" >
                                        <xsl:call-template name="countIndent">
                                        <xsl:with-param name="str" 
select="substring($str, 2)" />
                                        <xsl:with-param name="leadingSpaces" 
select="$leadingSpaces + 1"/>
                                </xsl:call-template>
                        </xsl:when>
                        <xsl:otherwise>
                                <xsl:value-of select="$leadingSpaces" />
                        </xsl:otherwise>
                </xsl:choose>
        </xsl:template>

However, I'd like to get this information as an xpath expression (so I can 
use it in a predicate e.g. /myElement[(indent expression) > 3]). Is this 
possible (it would only have to work for spaces, not all whitespace)?
Thanks for any advice.
Grainne.



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