Difference between PCDATA and CDATA

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.