Provided by: expat_2.2.9-1ubuntu0.6_amd64 bug

NAME

       xmlwf - Determines if an XML document is well-formed

SYNOPSIS

       xmlwf [-s] [-n] [-p] [-x] [-e encoding] [-w] [-d output-dir] [-c] [-m] [-r] [-t] [-N] [-v]
             [file ...]

DESCRIPTION

       xmlwf uses the Expat library to determine if an XML document is well-formed.  It  is  non-
       validating.

       If  you  do  not  specify  any files on the command-line, and you have a recent version of
       xmlwf, the input file will be read from standard input.

WELL-FORMED DOCUMENTS

       A well-formed document must adhere to the following rules:

       • The  file  begins  with  an  XML  declaration.   For   instance,   <?xml   version="1.0"
         standalone="yes"?>.  NOTE: xmlwf does not currently check for a valid XML declaration.

       • Every start tag is either empty (<tag/>) or has a corresponding end tag.

       • There  is  exactly one root element. This element must contain all other elements in the
         document. Only comments, white space, and processing instructions  may  come  after  the
         close of the root element.

       • All elements nest properly.

       • All attribute values are enclosed in quotes (either single or double).

       If  the  document  has a DTD, and it strictly complies with that DTD, then the document is
       also considered valid.  xmlwf is a non-validating parser -- it does  not  check  the  DTD.
       However, it does support external entities (see the -x option).

OPTIONS

       When  an  option includes an argument, you may specify the argument either separately ("-d
       output") or concatenated with the option ("-doutput"). xmlwf supports both.

       -c     If the input file is well-formed and xmlwf doesn't encounter any errors, the  input
              file  is  simply  copied  to  the  output  directory  unchanged.   This  implies no
              namespaces (turns off -n) and requires -d to specify an output directory.

       -d output-dir
              Specifies a directory to contain transformed representations of  the  input  files.
              By  default,  -d  outputs  a  canonical  representation (described below).  You can
              select different output formats using -c, -m and -N.

              The output filenames will be exactly the same as the input filenames or "STDIN"  if
              the  input  is  coming from standard input. Therefore, you must be careful that the
              output file does not go into the same directory as the input file. Otherwise, xmlwf
              will  delete  the input file before it generates the output file (just like running
              cat < file > file in most shells).

              Two structurally equivalent XML documents have a byte-for-byte identical  canonical
              XML  representation.  Note that ignorable white space is considered significant and
              is  treated  equivalently  to  data.   More  on  canonical  XML  can  be  found  at
              http://www.jclark.com/xml/canonxml.html .

       -e encoding
              Specifies the character encoding for the document, overriding any document encoding
              declaration. xmlwf supports four built-in encodings: US-ASCII, UTF-8,  UTF-16,  and
              ISO-8859-1.  Also see the -w option.

       -m     Outputs  some  strange  sort  of XML file that completely describes the input file,
              including character positions.  Requires -d to specify an output file.

       -n     Turns on namespace processing. (describe namespaces) -c disables namespaces.

       -N     Adds a doctype and notation declarations to canonical XML output.  This matches the
              example output used by the formal XML test cases.  Requires -d to specify an output
              file.

       -p     Tells xmlwf to process external DTDs and parameter entities.

              Normally xmlwf never parses parameter entities. -p tells it to always  parse  them.
              -p implies -x.

       -r     Normally  xmlwf  memory-maps the XML file before parsing; this can result in faster
              parsing on many platforms.  -r turns off memory-mapping and  uses  normal  file  IO
              calls  instead.  Of course, memory-mapping is automatically turned off when reading
              from standard input.

              Use of memory-mapping can cause  some  platforms  to  report  substantially  higher
              memory  usage  for  xmlwf,  but this appears to be a matter of the operating system
              reporting memory in a strange way; there is not a leak in xmlwf.

       -s     Prints an error if the document is not standalone.  A document is standalone if  it
              has no external subset and no references to parameter entities.

       -t     Turns  on  timings.  This tells Expat to parse the entire file, but not perform any
              processing.  This gives a fairly accurate idea of the raw  speed  of  Expat  itself
              without  client  overhead.   -t  turns  off most of the output options (-d, -m, -c,
              ...).

       -v     Prints the version of the Expat library being used, including some  information  on
              the compile-time configuration of the library, and then exits.

       -w     Enables  support for Windows code pages.  Normally, xmlwf will throw an error if it
              runs across an encoding that it is not equipped to handle itself.  With  -w,  xmlwf
              will try to use a Windows code page. See also -e.

       -x     Turns on parsing external entities.

              Non-validating  parsers  are  not  required  to  resolve external entities, or even
              expand entities at all.  Expat always expands internal entities (?),  but  external
              entity parsing must be enabled explicitly.

              External  entities  are simply entities that obtain their data from outside the XML
              file currently being parsed.

              This is an example of an internal entity:

              <!ENTITY vers '1.0.2'>

              And here are some examples of external entities:

              <!ENTITY header SYSTEM "header-&vers;.xml">  (parsed)
              <!ENTITY logo SYSTEM "logo.png" PNG>         (unparsed)

       --     (Two hyphens.)  Terminates the list of options. This is only needed if  a  filename
              starts with a hyphen. For example:

              xmlwf -- -myfile.xml

              will run xmlwf on the file -myfile.xml.

       Older versions of xmlwf do not support reading from standard input.

OUTPUT

       If  an input file is not well-formed, xmlwf prints a single line describing the problem to
       standard output. If a file is well formed, xmlwf outputs nothing.  Note  that  the  result
       code is not set.

BUGS

       xmlwf  returns  a  0 - noerr result, even if the file is not well-formed. There is no good
       way for a program to use xmlwf to quickly check a file -- it must parse  xmlwf's  standard
       output.

       The errors should go to standard error, not standard output.

       There  should be a way to get -d to send its output to standard output rather than forcing
       the user to send it to a file.

       I have no idea why anyone would want to use the -d, -c, and -m options. If  someone  could
       explain it to me, I'd like to add this information to this manpage.

ALTERNATIVES

       Here are some XML validators on the web:

       http://www.hcrc.ed.ac.uk/~richard/xml-check.html
       http://www.stg.brown.edu/service/xmlvalid/
       http://www.scripting.com/frontier5/xml/code/xmlValidator.html
       http://www.xml.com/pub/a/tools/ruwf/check.html

SEE ALSO

       The Expat home page:        http://www.libexpat.org/
       The W3 XML specification:   http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml

AUTHOR

       This  manual  page  was  written  by  Scott  Bronson  <bronson@rinspin.com> for the Debian
       GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). Permission is granted  to  copy,  distribute
       and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version
       1.1.

                                          March 11, 2016                                 XMLWF(1)