Re: [xml-dev] Why is the > symbol a reserved character?

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

On 09/07/2010 13:42, Costello, Roger L. wrote:

a perhaps more helpful answer

xml doesn't have any "reserved characters" (it does "reserve" the prefix 
xml in any case for possible future use though)

You can use > in attribute values and character data unquoted.
You need some way of quoting the character string ]]> which can't appear 
in character data, but that could be done without using & l t ;

If your question is why is that entity reference pre-defined, probably 
just for symmetry. If you get used to writing tests like a < b then 
it is rather natural to write b > a rather than remember that one is 
allowed and the other isn't.

David

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