[thelist] HTML Comments and Double Hyphens on Netscape 6.1 an d 6.2

Judah McAuley judah at wiredotter.com
Thu Jun 20 19:12:01 CDT 2002


Ray Hill wrote:
>>"White space is not permitted between the markup declaration
>>open delimiter("<!") and the comment open delimiter ("--"),
>>but is permitted between the comment close delimiter ("--")
>>and the markup declaration close delimiter (">").
>
>
> Interesting.  But by that rule, it would interpret:
>
>    <!-- Header Table -- Begin -->
>
> as:
>
>    <!-- Header Table --> Begin -->
>
> which would theoretically print
>
>    Begin --> to the screen.

I think thats a misreading of the standard.  All the standard says is
that whitespace is permitted between the -- and the > character at the
end of the comment.  The string " Begin --" counts as whitespace because
there is a space followed some time later by the actual end character
"<".  So the spec says the "-- somegarbagehere>" is functionally
equivalent to "-- >" which is functionally equivalent to "-->".  The
comment is not considered closed until the markup declaration close
delimiter (">") is found.

Its not completely clear to me, however, whether
"--thisistextwithoutaspace>" would count as an end comment since it does
not contain whitespace.  I suspect that it would not be valid, but I'm
not sure.

Judah






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