How do I check for the existence of an external file with XSL?

Question

I\'ve found a lot of examples that reference Java and C for this, but how do I, or can I, check for the existence of an external file with XSL.

First, I realize that

Answer 1

A proposed File Module EXPath specification would support file-system functions such as this (file:exists() in the spec) as standard XPath extension functions. There isn't yet an XSLT implementation for this, but its worth watching.