[thelist] the ampersand & and similar entity type characters

Bob Meetin bobm at dottedi.biz
Sun Nov 8 10:49:39 CST 2009


Just curious here.  Can someone explain when/why it's compulsory to use 
the entity code rather than the character itself in a document.  
Commonly in validating pages, even the cryptic php strings they won't 
validate unless I convert & to &, etc.

With simple page titles like "Jack & Jill" they become "Jack & Jill".

Or perhaps:

index.php?option=page&id=3 becomes index.php?option=page&id=3

It's just  rather fatiguing...

-Bob





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