Re[2]: Entity parsing

[Sam B. <bs...@us...>]

Hi Peter,

> To take a simple example: if you define the following at the front of your
> xml  file <!ENTITY ourname "Perfect Programmers"> then you can 
> reference &ourname; in the rest of the file

Yes, I know about the that feature. But it has 2 sides. 
Assuming we would let expat parse the entity in the sample below 
  <!ENTITY ourname "Perfect Programmers&gt;">
  &lt;&ourname; 

and would generate a file with one of the export-functions of Php.XPath the
result would be:
  <!ENTITY ourname "Perfect Programmers>">
  <Perfect Programmers>

All defined entities (plus the 5 xml entities) have been replaces and any
changes to  <!ENTITY ourname "Perfect Programmers"> in the exported file
would have *no effect* any more! Even worse the &lt; and &gt; have been
replaced too!
After the XML has been parsed (and maybe modified by one of the included
DOM functions) you wouldn't want this to happen when exporting to an
XML-file.

Note that the expat parser replaces the 5 xml entities plus all the
entities that are defined by  <!ENTITY  ...>  'silently'. 

I see no simple solution to this problem and therefore I believe the way we
handle it, be keeping the entities 'as is', is the best we can do.


Regards
-- 
Sam Blum <bs...@us...>

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