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Michael Fitzgerald wrote: > #PCDATA [...] specifies that an element will contain parsed > character data. Parsing tests whether the characters conform to the > lexical constraints imposed by XML 1.0. > > CDATA appears in attribute declarations and specifies that an > attribute will contain character data that is not parsed. That's not accurate. All characters in an XML document are "parsed" in the sense that you describe. "CDATA" is a token used in an attribute declaration to declare the attribute as having a string type. '&', and '<' and the quote character used for delimiting the attribute value have special meaning in attributes of this type. "#PCDATA" is a token used in an element declaration to declare the element as having mixed content (character data, or character data mixed with other elements). The content of the element is parsed; '&' and '<' have special meaning and must be escaped if they aren't the start of markup. A "CDATA section", bounded in markup by "<![CDATA[" and "]]>" is, by comparison, "unparsed" character data (though even it is subject to at least one restriction -- it can't contain "]]>"). A CDATA section can only appear in element content, and it has nothing to do with the "CDATA" token used in attribute decls. - Mike ____________________________________________________________________________ mike j. brown, fourthought.com | xml/xslt: http://skew.org/xml/ denver/boulder, colorado, usa | personal: http://hyperreal.org/~mike/
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