Valid XML Documents

Chris Maden crism at oreilly.com
Fri Aug 6 22:44:46 BST 1999


[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
-- 
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