Determine the length of node values in XSLT

Sometimes the length of a node value needs to be determined in XSLT. I used to process it like this: <XSL: variable name = "schorus" select = "Chorus"/>
<XSL: variable name = "len" select = "string-length ($ schorus)"/>

But then I found out the problem. If there are carriage return and other characters between nodes, it will be considered as the value> 1. So I used a function to remove the white space in the string, as shown below: <XSL: variable name = "schorus" select = "Chorus"/>
<XSL: variable name = "len" select = "string-length (normalize-space ($ schorus)"/>