1XMLWF(1) XMLWF(1)
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6 xmlwf - Determines if an XML document is well-formed
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9 xmlwf [ -s] [ -n] [ -p] [ -x] [ -e encoding] [ -w] [ -d output-
10 dir] [ -c] [ -m] [ -r] [ -t] [ -v] [ file ...]
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14 xmlwf uses the Expat library to determine if an XML document is well-
15 formed. It is non-validating.
16 If you do not specify any files on the command-line, and you have a
18 recent version of xmlwf, the input file will be read from standard
19 input.
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22 A well-formed document must adhere to the following rules:
23 · The file begins with an XML declaration. For instance, <?xml ver‐
25 sion="1.0" standalone="yes"?>. NOTE: xmlwf does not currently check
26 for a valid XML declaration.
27 · Every start tag is either empty (<tag/>) or has a corresponding end
29 tag.
30 · There is exactly one root element. This element must contain all
32 other elements in the document. Only comments, white space, and pro‐
33 cessing instructions may come after the close of the root element.
34 · All elements nest properly.
36 · All attribute values are enclosed in quotes (either single or dou‐
38 ble).
39 If the document has a DTD, and it strictly complies with that DTD, then
41 the document is also considered valid. xmlwf is a non-validating
42 parser -- it does not check the DTD. However, it does support external
43 entities (see the -x option).
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46 When an option includes an argument, you may specify the argument
47 either separately ("-d output") or concatenated with the option
48 ("-doutput"). xmlwf supports both.
49 -c If the input file is well-formed and xmlwf doesn't encounter any
51 errors, the input file is simply copied to the output directory
52 unchanged. This implies no namespaces (turns off -n) and
53 requires -d to specify an output file.
54 -d output-dir
56 Specifies a directory to contain transformed representations of
57 the input files. By default, -d outputs a canonical representa‐
58 tion (described below). You can select different output formats
59 using -c and -m.
60 The output filenames will be exactly the same as the input file‐
62 names or "STDIN" if the input is coming from standard input.
63 Therefore, you must be careful that the output file does not go
64 into the same directory as the input file. Otherwise, xmlwf
65 will delete the input file before it generates the output file
66 (just like running cat < file > file in most shells).
67 Two structurally equivalent XML documents have a byte-for-byte
69 identical canonical XML representation. Note that ignorable
70 white space is considered significant and is treated equiva‐
71 lently to data. More on canonical XML can be found at
72 http://www.jclark.com/xml/canonxml.html .
73 -e encoding
75 Specifies the character encoding for the document, overriding
76 any document encoding declaration. xmlwf supports four built-in
77 encodings: US-ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16, and ISO-8859-1. Also see
78 the -w option.
79 -m Outputs some strange sort of XML file that completely describes
81 the input file, including character positions. Requires -d to
82 specify an output file.
83 -n Turns on namespace processing. (describe namespaces) -c dis‐
85 ables namespaces.
86 -p Tells xmlwf to process external DTDs and parameter entities.
88 Normally xmlwf never parses parameter entities. -p tells it to
90 always parse them. -p implies -x.
91 -r Normally xmlwf memory-maps the XML file before parsing; this can
93 result in faster parsing on many platforms. -r turns off mem‐
94 ory-mapping and uses normal file IO calls instead. Of course,
95 memory-mapping is automatically turned off when reading from
96 standard input.
97 Use of memory-mapping can cause some platforms to report sub‐
99 stantially higher memory usage for xmlwf, but this appears to be
100 a matter of the operating system reporting memory in a strange
101 way; there is not a leak in xmlwf.
102 -s Prints an error if the document is not standalone. A document
104 is standalone if it has no external subset and no references to
105 parameter entities.
106 -t Turns on timings. This tells Expat to parse the entire file,
108 but not perform any processing. This gives a fairly accurate
109 idea of the raw speed of Expat itself without client overhead.
110 -t turns off most of the output options (-d, -m, -c, ...).
111 -v Prints the version of the Expat library being used, including
113 some information on the compile-time configuration of the
114 library, and then exits.
115 -w Enables support for Windows code pages. Normally, xmlwf will
117 throw an error if it runs across an encoding that it is not
118 equipped to handle itself. With -w, xmlwf will try to use a
119 Windows code page. See also -e.
120 -x Turns on parsing external entities.
122 Non-validating parsers are not required to resolve external
124 entities, or even expand entities at all. Expat always expands
125 internal entities (?), but external entity parsing must be
126 enabled explicitly.
127 External entities are simply entities that obtain their data
129 from outside the XML file currently being parsed.
130 This is an example of an internal entity:
132 <!ENTITY vers '1.0.2'>
134 And here are some examples of external entities:
136 <!ENTITY header SYSTEM "header-&vers;.xml"> (parsed)
138 <!ENTITY logo SYSTEM "logo.png" PNG> (unparsed)
139 -- (Two hyphens.) Terminates the list of options. This is only
141 needed if a filename starts with a hyphen. For example:
142 xmlwf -- -myfile.xml
144 will run xmlwf on the file -myfile.xml.
146 Older versions of xmlwf do not support reading from standard input.
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150 If an input file is not well-formed, xmlwf prints a single line
151 describing the problem to standard output. If a file is well formed,
152 xmlwf outputs nothing. Note that the result code is not set.
153
155 According to the W3C standard, an XML file without a declaration at the
156 beginning is not considered well-formed. However, xmlwf allows this to
157 pass.
158 xmlwf returns a 0 - noerr result, even if the file is not well-formed.
160 There is no good way for a program to use xmlwf to quickly check a file
161 -- it must parse xmlwf's standard output.
162 The errors should go to standard error, not standard output.
164 There should be a way to get -d to send its output to standard output
166 rather than forcing the user to send it to a file.
167 I have no idea why anyone would want to use the -d, -c, and -m options.
169 If someone could explain it to me, I'd like to add this information to
170 this manpage.
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173 Here are some XML validators on the web:
174 http://www.hcrc.ed.ac.uk/~richard/xml-check.html
176 http://www.stg.brown.edu/service/xmlvalid/
177 http://www.scripting.com/frontier5/xml/code/xmlValidator.html
178 http://www.xml.com/pub/a/tools/ruwf/check.html
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181 The Expat home page: http://www.libexpat.org/
182 The W3 XML specification: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml
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185 This manual page was written by Scott Bronson <bronson@rinspin.com> for
186 the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). Permission is
187 granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms
188 of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1.
189 24 January 2003 XMLWF(1)