Re: [xml-dev] Why is < illegal in an attribute value but the equivalent hex and decimal character entities are legal?

On 17/03/2022 11:57, Roger L Costello wrote:
> Thanks Pete. That makes sense.
> 
> And to be sure that I am crystal clear, when you say:
> 
> Internal logic converts "&#x3C;x>blah&#x3C;/x>" to "<x>blah</x>"
> 
> The resulting converted value:
> 
>      "<x>blah</x>"
> 
> does _not_ mean there is an element <x> with value blah. Rather, it means there is a stream of characters '<', 'x', '>', 'b', 'l', 'a', 'h', '<', '/', 'x', '>'  and those characters have no semantics and are not to be interpreted.
> 
> Correct?

Correct.  At the XML parsing level an attribute value of "<x>blah</x>" 
has no more semantic value than an attribute value of "Roger".

(Naturally, to be pedantic, higher levels could associate domain 
specific semantics with either of those values - like your ET and EX 
attribute values posted earlier - but as far as XML parsing is 
concerned, the job is done :) )

Regards,

Pete.
-- 
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Pete Cordell
Codalogic Ltd
Read & write XML in C++, http://www.xml2cpp.com
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