XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Name

General Entity References

Synopsis

                        &
                        name
                        ;

General entity references are recognized only within the parsed character data in the body of an XML document. They may appear within the parsed character data contained between element start- and end-tags, or within the value of an attribute. They are not recognized within a document’s DTD (except inside default values for attributes) or within CDATA sections.

Tip

The sequence of operations that occurs when a parsed general entity is included by the XML parser can lead to interesting side effects. An entity’s replacement text is, in turn, read by the parser. If character or general entity replacements exist in the entity replacement text, they are also parsed and included as parsing continues.