xml-dev - Re: Entity's replacement text contain an entity reference?

[Richard Tobin <richard@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>]

> Can an entity's replacement text contain an entity reference?

Yes.

> <!ENTITY foo "foomeister">
> <!ENTITY boo "it is a &foo;">

This has the result you expect.

It's worth noting just how this works.  The reference to foo is *not*
expanded at the time boo is defined, but gets expanded after boo
itself is expanded in the body of the document.  So there is no
requirement for foo to be defined before boo.  Character entities on
the other hand *are* expanded at definition time, which is why the
definition of amp (see earlier discussion) needs "double escaping".

> If this is legal, what XML parsers support it?

I would have guessed "all of them", if you hadn't said IE5 doesn't.

-- Richard

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