Re: [xml-dev] Comparing xml fragments

["Norman Gray" <norman@astro.gla.ac.uk>]

John, hello.

On 3 Aug 2018, at 16:12, John Dziurlaj wrote:

> These fragments have repeating elements, and I worry that parsers / 
> writers
> may rewrite the fragments such that the order of their sub elements 
> may
> change, making comparison difficult. Is this a valid concern, and what 
> can
> I do about it?
An XML parser is permitted to report _attributes_ in any order, but a 
parser is emphatically not permitted to reorder elements.

A particular XML-parser library might, for its own specialised (speed?) 
reasons, choose to ignore this, and an application layer above the 
parser may elect to regard differently-ordered child elements as 
equivalent, but the ordering of elements (but not attributes) is in 
general a significant property of an XML document.

If you want to normalise XML fragments, that's a separate issue.

Best wishes,

Norman


--
Norman Gray  :  https://nxg.me.uk