XML Is Not Injective | Hacker News Reader

XML Is Not Injective

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3 pointscode-faster4 comments

I think there might be an error in the examples as the second example does not have a single root element.

If you need to spot an array vs an element, you have to use a container tag to express it. This is the same structure as is needed to encode algebraic data types.

  element: <a>b0</a>
  array of two elements: <array><a>b0</a><a>b1</a></array>
  array of one element: <array><a>b0</a></array>

Ah, they're meant to be xml fragments, not full xml documents.

In my limited experience I haven't seen people use the <array> container and the xml parser still works, although it is a good idea.

It might be something other than <array>. The name depends on the DTD. It does need a DTD that has the concept of allowing either a single item or a container.

This seems like a misunderstanding of XML. XML has no built in concept of arrays or properties. This is a problem with your application of XML, not XML itself.

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