libxml makes a difference between " and "

Question

Hello Everybody,

I encounter a unbelievable strange problem:

The libxml parser I'm using makes a difference between " and ".

Is there one? The following attribute makes the error:

name="New Headway_the third edition"

if I replace the " character with the " I enter with my keyboard everything is working fine... I allready proved, that there are not just two ' characters next to each other... The parser returns the following error:

:72: parser error : invalid character in attribute value
<TopCont id="1197" name="New Headway_the thir...
                         ^

The really strange thing is that the attribute is coming from a web service which does working well exept to his TopCont... The characters in a very normal way!

Thanks for your Help, Markus

Answer 1

The first one is a " - ascii code 34 - this is the valid double quote to use in an XML file.

The other one is some sort of fancy open double quote (or close double quote, I can't quite tell). The fact that it looks quite like the character with code 34 is irrelevant from the XML parsers point of view.

The parser will only accept " (34) as a quote. You can't use any other character and expect it to work - it's like just using any other character at random and expecting it to make sense :

<TopCont id="1197" name=¢New Headway_the thir...

The only reason you're confused is because " and " look the same to a human; the parser only cares about it's character code :)

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NB It's very odd that a web service will return both types of quote - this tells me that someone might have cut-and-paste from somewhere else i.e. Word ? What is the web service?