When did you vanish, o' CDATA section wrapper?

["Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>]

Hi Folks,

I opened a document in Notepad and it showed me this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Document>
    <![CDATA[
		if (a < b) & (b < c) then x = 23;
    ]]>
</Document>

I will refer to this set of characters

    <![CDATA[]]>

as the "CDATA section wrapper" 

That is, it is the CDATA section sans content.

I gave the document to an XML parser. The XML parser ingested the document and then gave its output to an XML application (e.g., an XSLT processor or an XML Schema validator).

document ---> XML Parser ---> XML Application

Somewhere between the time the XML parser ingested the document and the time the XML application ingested the output of the XML parser, the CDATA section wrapper was removed (and reserved characters inside the CDATA section were escaped).

document ---> CDATA section wrapper present ---> XML Parser ---> CDATA section wrapper absent ---> XML Application

Precisely when did the CDATA section wrapper get removed?

I believe the DOM API contains methods for accessing a CDATA section, right?

The XML parser ingests the document and builds a DOM tree, right?

So the CDATA section wrapper is still in the DOM tree, right?

XML Parser:

---> ingest ---> build DOM ---> remove CDATA section wrapper now?  ---> do what? ---> 

/Roger