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RE: How to read the encoding of an XML document
- To: <xsl-list at lists dot mulberrytech dot com>
- Subject: RE: [xsl] How to read the encoding of an XML document
- From: "Michael Kay" <mhkay at iclway dot co dot uk>
- Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 16:50:32 +0100
- Reply-To: xsl-list at lists dot mulberrytech dot com
> >You can't. By the time the XML parser has done its work, the original
> >encoding of the file is of no further interest, since all
> the characters are
> >now in Unicode.
>
> When you say Unicode, does that equate to UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32 or
> something else? Or does the answer depend upon the XML
> parser you are
> using, which in my case is MSXML3.0?
When the XML is in a file on disk, each Unicode character is represented by
one or more bytes, so it's reasonable to talk about encoding. When the XML
has been parsed and is passed to your application via an API, the characters
are typically variables of some data type depending on your programming
language, so their binary representation is no longer of any concern.
Mike Kay
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