[thelist] the ampersand & and similar entity type characters

ivo cervantes_vive at yahoo.com
Sun Nov 8 11:43:12 CST 2009


You can still use character codes if the encoding of the file supports it except for special characters (&, <, >). If you have a plain ASCII document and need to represent accented e then you need to write&eacute; or &#233; because ASCII doesnt have a character for it.

This is what makes the '&' character special, it is used to indicate numeric and character entities. If you need to indicate an actual '&' then you need to use &amp; .

Check this out

http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/charset.html#h-5.3


----- Original Message ----
> From: Bob Meetin <bobm at dottedi.biz>
> To: "thelist at lists.evolt.org" <thelist at lists.evolt.org>
> Sent: Sun, November 8, 2009 8:49:39 AM
> Subject: [thelist] the ampersand & and similar entity type characters
> 
> 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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