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Re: parsing XML string that consists of special character



Olga,

>I have XML string that can consist of characters like <,>,&

If your strings contain < or &, then they aren't xml, because these
characters are reserved for special use in xml (namely as the beginning of
a tag and the beginning of an entity name, respectively).  Therefore, you
will have to preprocess your strings before you can parse it using xml or
xslt.
There are three options:
   "escape" all the < and & characters by replacing them with &lt; and
   &amp; respectively (note, the semi-colons are part of the replacements).
   enclose the fields you pull from the database in so-called CDATA tags,
   which are <!CDATA[ at the beginning and ]]> at the end.  This will work
   except for the unusual case where your data contains ]]> anywhere.
   disable-output-escaping (very rarely necessary, and usually a sign of
   insufficient understanding of the original problem).

This is a widely discussed problem, both on this list and elsewhere.

Rick Suiter





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