"Robert C. Lyons" wrote:

> I see one problem:
> The solution doesn't work if any of the file names
> in xmlDir.lst contains an ampersand
> (e.g., "Tom & Jerry.doc"), since an external parsed
> general entity (e.g., xmlDir.lst) can not contain
> an unescaped ampersand.
> 
Ouch! I hadn't thought of that.

> Perhaps there is a DOS command that is similar to
> the Unix sed command; your batch program could then
> replace each ampersand in the xmlDir.lst file with "&".
> I'm not aware of such a DOS command.
> 
Nor am I. Unless there is a DOS edit.com guru out there...?

I was trying to do two things - (1) provide a utility, and (2) offer a
useful technique. I think the technique still stands, but with the
constraint that the input file can't contain ampersands.

I've written a little java program that can be called with jview (I hope
a reasonable assumption in most windows environments) and modified the
batch file. This should rescue the utility, if not its dignity.

Francis.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE xmlDir [
<!ENTITY xmlDirList
           SYSTEM "xmlDir.lst">    
  ]>

<xmlDir>&xmlDirList;</xmlDir>

import java.io.*;

public class EscapeAmps
{
  static final int amp = '&';
  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
    int b;
    DataInputStream stdIn = new DataInputStream(System.in);
    try
    {
      while((-1)!=(b=stdIn.read()))
      {
        switch(b)
        {
          case amp:
          {
            System.out.print("&");
            break;
          }
          default:
          {
            System.out.print((char)b);
            break;
          }
        }//switch (b)
      }//while(!eof())
    }
    catch(Exception e)
    {
      return;
    }
    return;
  }
}

Attachment: EscapeAmps.class
Description: application/java