• From: Aaron Swartz <aswartz@s...>
• To: David Ezell <David_E3@v...>
• Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 12:59:47 -0500

David Ezell <David_E3@V...> wrote:

>> Then there's #4, the *RIGHT WAY* to do this, which is: A) Before inserting
>> your arbitrary text into your XML wrapper, run it through a filter that
>> replaces & with &amp;, < with &lt;, and > with &gt;. B) Before handing
>> arbitrary text back to the user, run it through a filter that replaces &lt;
>> with <, &gt; with >, and &amp; with &.
>> 
>> Voila, the problem is solved.  You don't have the byte bloat of base64, you
>> don't have the limitation of not including ]]> in CDATA, and you don't have
>> to mess up validation.
>> 
> Not a bad idea for simple uses, but it won't nest (at least I don't think it
> will):  the export filter would convert all the PCDATA at once.  It seems to
> me a safe bet that if you need to nest one level, you'll have use cases for
> nesting to N levels.

I don't understand -- couldn't you just use &amp;?

Original: <text/>
One level: &lt;text/&gt;
Two levels: &amp;lt;text/&amp;gt;
Three levels: &amp;amp;lt;text/&amp;amp;gt;

-- 
Aaron Swartz | me@a... | http://www.aaronsw.com

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