Is there an XSL "contains" directive?

there is indeed an xpath contains function it should look something like:

<xsl:for-each select="item">
  <xsl:variable name="hhref" select="link" />
  <xsl:variable name="pdate" select="pubDate" />
  <xsl:if test="not(contains($hhref,'1234'))">
    <li>
      <a href="{$hhref}" title="{$pdate}">
        <xsl:value-of select="title"/>
      </a>
    </li>
  </xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>

Use the standard XPath function contains().

Function: boolean contains(string, string)

The contains function returns true if the first argument string contains the second argument string, and otherwise returns false

It should be something like...

<xsl:if test="contains($hhref, '1234')">

(not tested)

See w3schools (always a good reference BTW)

Sure there is! For instance:

<xsl:if test="not(contains($hhref, '1234'))">
  <li>
    <a href="{$hhref}" title="{$pdate}">
      <xsl:value-of select="title"/>
    </a>
  </li>
</xsl:if>

The syntax is: contains(stringToSearchWithin, stringToSearchFor)