Re: [xml-dev] Error and Fatal Error

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

On 17/07/2011 21:56, Stephen D Green wrote:
> Cross-posting, but yes it would be possible to do that
> but mean handling all the weird and wonderful angle
> bracket stuff ourselves in code

No, if you are taking strings from user data (and can ignore the 
possibility of control characters there) then the only thing you have to 
do is replace < by &lt's and & by &lt;, You don't need to parse 
anything. In a typical .net language you are talking about a line of code.

Inserting a string into XML without quoting the xml syntax characters < 
  and & (and it's safest to to > as well while you are there) is just 
generating errors that it is unreasonable to expect a parser later in 
the chain to fix. If you have an application generating syntax errors 
then surely it's better to fix the application than to expect every tool 
taht may consume the output of that application to somehow magically fix 
up the errors.

David