Valid XML Documents

[Chris Maden]

[Mallikarjuna Sangappa]
> Are the following XML Documents valid

None of them are because they don't have DTDs.  I suspect you meant,
"are they well formed?" which I will answer.

> 1. 
> 
> <PERSON>
> <FIRSTNAME>
> </FIRSTNAME>
> </PERSON>

Yes.  A PERSON element contains a new line, a FIRSTNAME element, and
another new line.  The FIRSTNAME contains only a new line.

> 2. 
> 
> <PERSON>
> &lt;FIRSTNAME>
> </FIRSTNAME>
> </PERSON>

No.  You start a PERSON element, which has text content of "
<FIRSTNAME>
" (the entity reference is resolved) but then you come to an end-tag
for an element type that was never opened.

> 3. 
> 
> <PERSON>
> &lt;FIRSTNAME>
> &lt;/FIRSTNAME>
> </PERSON>

Yes.  Here you have a PERSON element whose content is "
<FIRSTNAME>
</FIRSTNAME>
" (all text, not markup).

You may find the XML Recommendation useful:
<URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml>.

-Chris
-- 
<!NOTATION SGML.Geek PUBLIC "-//Anonymous//NOTATION SGML Geek//EN">
<!ENTITY crism PUBLIC "-//O'Reilly//NONSGML Christopher R. Maden//EN"
"<URL>http://www.oreilly.com/people/staff/crism/ <TEL>+1.617.499.7487
<USMAIL>90 Sherman Street, Cambridge, MA 02140 USA" NDATA SGML.Geek>

xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa at ic.ac.uk)