Re: An incompatible CData idea

Paul Prescod (papresco@technologist.com)
Mon, 27 Oct 1997 16:50:00 -0500

Toby Speight wrote:
> (Using entities may or may not be a better move, depending on one's
> assessment of the source material. It's an inescapable fact that all
> included material needs a stage of processing before insertion. In
> fact, the more I think about it, the more dangerous I think CDATA
> marked sections are, because they enable one to get away with it
> *almost every time*, thus increasing the likelihood of a quick-fix
> solution appearing to work despite containing an (obscure) bug.)

I think that CDATA marked sections cause obscure bugs.

For example, this code is not valid:

<CODE.EXAMPLE>
<![CDATA[

if (g[ j [ i ]]> 5) print "foo"

]]>
</CODE.EXAMPLE>

The second marked section end delimiter will cause an error message. It
will not be interpreted as content as you might expect.

Paul Prescod