XML Pocket Reference, 3rd Edition

CDATA Sections

CDATA sections are used to escape text that contains characters that would otherwise be recognized as markup.

Productions

[18] CDSect ::= CDStart CData CDEnd
[19] CDStart ::= '<![CDATA['
[20] Cdata ::= (Char* - (Char* ']]>' Char*))
[21] CDEnd ::= ']]>'

Examples

<markup><![CDATA[ < and & are characters used in markup ]]>
</markup>

<company><![CDATA[Simon & Associates]]>
</company>

Description

A CDATA section begins with the characters <![CDATA[ and ends with ]]>. CDATA sections in XML allow you to hide characters like < and & from an XML processor. These characters have special meaning in markup; < begins an element tag and & begins a character reference or entity reference.

When processed, the & character in the CDATA section is hidden from the processor so that it isn’t interpreted as markup, as the start of an entity or character reference would be. As with comments, CDATA sections cannot be nested. A CDATA section must not contain ]]>.

See also

§2.7