#104 xml ed mangles newline in attribute-value

[rainpumped]

I've got the following xml-file:

cat test.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<a>
  <b parm="gerg
wegreqwgwe
gwegwegwe
eg" />
</a>

and when I try to edit the file, xmlstarlet applies changes to the whitespace in the attribute-value:

xml ed -u a/b -v test /tmp/test.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<a>
  <b parm="gerg wegreqwgwe gwegwegwe eg">test</b>
</a>

I use:

xml --version
1.5.0
compiled against libxml2 2.7.6, linked with 20706
compiled against libxslt 1.1.26, linked with 10126

Thanks & KR
Thomas

[Noam Postavsky]

Sorry, this can't really be fixed because xmlstarlet never gets to even see the value with newlines. It's based on libxml2 which follows the XML spec quite strictly:

3.3.3 Attribute-Value Normalization

Before the value of an attribute is passed to the application or checked for validity, the XML processor MUST normalize the attribute value by applying the algorithm below, or by using some other method such that the value passed to the application is the same as that produced by the algorithm.
...
For a white space character (#x20, #xD, #xA, #x9), append a space character (#x20) to the normalized value.

[rainpumped]

Thank you for clarifying!

the application responsible for creating this portion of xml is already known for doing things not so right when it comes to creating xml... ;-)