XML CDATA and escaping
XML’s syntax for CDATA looks like this:
<![CDATA[some text]]>
Tag syntax within a CDATA section is suspended, so this is well-formed XML:
<![CDATA[some <more> text]]>
even though it looks like the “<more>” tag is unclosed.
There’s only one thing you can’t say in a CDATA section: “]]>”. But there’s a trick to save us, even here. To print an arbitrary string in a CDATA enclosure, replace each instance of “]]>” with “]]]]><![CDATA[>”, and then put the normal “<![CDATA[”/”]]>” brackets around it:
my ]]> text
becomes
<![CDATA[my ]]]]><![CDATA[> text]]>
1 comment October 25th, 2007 tonyg