Re: [xml-dev] The meaning of the "string" datatype?

[David Carlisle <davidc@nag.co.uk>]

> it would be perfectly valid to place a billion characters between the start tag and end tag.
> Do you agree?

yes except it's nothing really to do with the string type or with XSD.
The same comments apply to well formed XML, or to DTD (PCDATA) or Relax
NG (text).

An actual processor of course will have implementation limits over and
above the XML well formedness requirements. Most have limits on the
length of element names, attribute values, and if they are building a
tree rather than just streaming they may well have limits on the size of
element content (your example) and/or the total size of the document.

SGML DTD used to allow you to specify all kinds of costraints such as
length of element names, total "capacity' etc in the SGML declaration
but XML simplified that all away by working in an idealised world where
the specification assumed processors with infinite capacity, and just
pragmatically allow them to fail when some system defined capacity is
exceeded.


David

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