Tags and White Space

Inside tags the white space story is quite different. These three shape elements are the same for all intents and purposes.

<shape>star</shape>

<shape
            >star</shape>

<shape    >star</shape>

Parsers will not distinguish one from the other, and your code should not depend on the difference.

Similarly, white space in a document's prolog, epilog, and DTD is not considered. For example, these three documents are essentially the same.

 <?xml version="1.0"?> <?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" href="root.css"?> <!DOCTYPE root SYSTEM "data.dtd"> <root> contents </root> ____________________________________________________________ <?xml version="1.0"?> <?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" href="root.css"?> <!DOCTYPE root SYSTEM "data.dtd"> ...

Get Effective XML: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your XML now with O’Reilly online learning.

O’Reilly members experience live online training, plus books, videos, and digital content from 200+ publishers.

Start your free trial