Difference between PCDATA and CDATA
Difference between PCDATA and CDATA > #PCDATA [...] specifies that an element will contain parsed
> character data. Parsing tests whether the characters conform to the
> lexical constraints imposed by XML 1.0.
>
> CDATA appears in attribute declarations and specifies that an
> attribute will contain character data that is not parsed.
That's not accurate. All characters in an XML document are 'parsed' in
the sense that you describe.
'CDATA' is a token used in an attribute declaration to declare the
attribute as having a string type. '&', and '<' and the quote character
used for delimiting the attribute value have special meaning in
attributes of this type.
'#PCDATA' is a token used in an element declaration to declare the
element as having mixed content (character data, or character data mixed
with other elements). The content of the element is parsed; '&' and '<'
have special meaning and must be escaped if they aren't the start of
markup.
A 'CDATA section', bounded in markup by '<![CDATA[' and ']]>' is, by
comparison, 'unparsed' character data (though even it is subject to at
least one restriction -- it can't contain ']]>'). A CDATA section can
only appear in element content, and it has nothing to do with the
'CDATA' token used in attribute decls.
