Re: Comparing xml fragments

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From: "Norman Gray" <norman@a...>
To: "John Dziurlaj" <john@h...>
Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2018 17:30:31 +0100

John, hello.

On 3 Aug 2018, at 16:12, John Dziurlaj wrote:

These fragments have repeating elements, and I worry that parsers / writers
may rewrite the fragments such that the order of their sub elements may
change, making comparison difficult. Is this a valid concern, and what can
I do about it?

An XML parser is permitted to report _attributes_ in any order, but a parser is emphatically not permitted to reorder elements.

A particular XML-parser library might, for its own specialised (speed?) reasons, choose to ignore this, and an application layer above the parser may elect to regard differently-ordered child elements as equivalent, but the ordering of elements (but not attributes) is in general a significant property of an XML document.

If you want to normalise XML fragments, that's a separate issue.

Best wishes,

Norman

--
Norman Gray : https://nxg.me.uk

References:
- Comparing xml fragments
  - From: John Dziurlaj <john@h...>

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