xenial (1) xmlwf.1.gz

Provided by: expat_2.1.0-7ubuntu0.16.04.5_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]  [-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 file.

       -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   and -m.

                 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 the input file, including
                 character postitions.  Requires -d to specify an output file.

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

       -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.

                                                                                                        XMLWF(1)