Re: Why doesn't the XML specification use the word "metacharacters" for less-than, ampersand, greater-than, quote, apostrophe symbols?

Metacharacter in my understanding of ‘meta’ would mean a character used to
represent a character.
That meaning seems to fit with its use in regex.
It does not fit with XML.


On Tue, 9 Aug 2022 at 12:08, Roger L Costello <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> The regular expression metacharacters are:
>
> \  ^  $  .  [  ]  |  (  )  *  +  ?  {  }
>
> They are called metacharacters because they have special meanings.
>
> XML has five characters with special meanings:
>
> <  >  &  "  '
>
> I searched the XML specification for the word "metacharacter". There are
> zero occurrences.
>
> Why doesn't the XML specification use the word "metacharacter"?
>
> /Roger
>
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----
Stephen D Green