exclude empty elements - xslt

Question

in my sample xml file, i have this:
<AAA mandatory = "true"> good </AAA>
<BBB mandatory = "true"></BBB>
<CCC />
in the resulting xml, the result should be like this:
<AAA> good </AAA>
<BBB></BBB>
what should i put in my transformation file xslt to produce this xml?
currently, i have this:
<xsl:template match="node()[(#mandatory='true' or (following-sibling::*[#mandatory='true' and string-length(normalize-space(.)) > 0] or preceding-sibling::*[#mandatory='true' and string-length(normalize-space(.)) > 0])) or descendant-or-self::*[string-length(normalize-space(.)) > 0]]">
but this keeps displaying
<CCC />

Answer 1

When I run your XSLT on the input XML I do not get any output.
Your provided XML is not well formed and the XPATH in your "match" is too complicated I think.
I came up with a XSL 1.0 solution but I do not know if you can use that in XSL 2.0. I do not have experience with XSL 2.0.
This XSLT:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
<xsl:template match="/">
<list>
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</list>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="*[#mandatory='true']">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates />
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
applied to this input XML:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<list>
<AAA mandatory="true"> good </AAA>
<BBB mandatory="true"/>
<CCC/>
</list>
gives this output XML:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<list>
<AAA> good </AAA>
<BBB/>
</list>
I am not sure if you also want to check on the text length of an element or only on the attribute mandatory. I only check on the attribute in my XSL.