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XMLWF(1)                                                              XMLWF(1)

NAME
       xmlwf - Determines if an XML document is well-formed
SYNOPSIS
       xmlwf  [  -s]  [ -n]  [ -p]  [ -x]  [ -e encoding]  [ -w]  [ -d output-
       dir]  [ -c]  [ -m]  [ -r]  [ -t]  [ -v]  [ file ...]

DESCRIPTION
       xmlwf uses the Expat library to determine if an XML document  is  well-
       formed.  It is non-validating.
       If  you  do  not  specify any files on the command-line, and you have a
       recent version of xmlwf, the input file  will  be  read  from  standard
       input.
WELL-FORMED DOCUMENTS
       A well-formed document must adhere to the following rules:
       o The  file  begins  with an XML declaration.  For instance, <?xml ver-
         sion="1.0" standalone="yes"?>.  NOTE: xmlwf does not currently  check
         for a valid XML declaration.
       o Every  start  tag is either empty (<tag/>) or has a corresponding end
         tag.
       o There is exactly one root element.  This  element  must  contain  all
         other elements in the document.  Only comments, white space, and pro-
         cessing instructions may come after the close of the root element.
       o All elements nest properly.
       o All attribute values are enclosed in quotes (either  single  or  dou-
         ble).
       If the document has a DTD, and it strictly complies with that DTD, then
       the document is also  considered  valid.   xmlwf  is  a  non-validating
       parser -- it does not check the DTD.  However, it does support external
       entities (see the -x option).
OPTIONS
       When an option includes an  argument,  you  may  specify  the  argument
       either  separately  ("-d  output")  or  concatenated  with  the  option
       ("-doutput").  xmlwf supports both.
       -c     If the input file is well-formed and xmlwf doesn't encounter any
              errors,  the input file is simply copied to the output directory
              unchanged.  This  implies  no  namespaces  (turns  off  -n)  and
              requires -d to specify an output file.
       -d output-dir
              Specifies  a directory to contain transformed representations of
              the input files.  By default, -d outputs a canonical representa-
              tion (described below).  You can select different output formats
              using -c and -m.
              The output filenames will be exactly the same as the input file-
              names  or  "STDIN"  if  the input is coming from standard input.
              Therefore, you must be careful that the output file does not  go
              into  the  same  directory  as the input file.  Otherwise, xmlwf
              will delete the input file before it generates the  output  file
              (just like running cat < file > file in most shells).
              Two  structurally  equivalent XML documents have a byte-for-byte
              identical canonical XML  representation.   Note  that  ignorable
              white  space  is  considered  significant and is treated equiva-
              lently  to  data.   More  on  canonical  XML  can  be  found  at
              http://www.jclark.com/xml/canonxml.html .
       -e encoding
              Specifies  the  character  encoding for the document, overriding
              any document encoding declaration.  xmlwf supports four built-in
              encodings:  US-ASCII,  UTF-8,  UTF-16, and ISO-8859-1.  Also see
              the -w option.
       -m     Outputs some strange sort of XML file that completely  describes
              the  input  file, including character positions.  Requires -d to
              specify an output file.
       -n     Turns on namespace processing.  (describe  namespaces)  -c  dis-
              ables namespaces.
       -p     Tells xmlwf to process external DTDs and parameter entities.
              Normally  xmlwf never parses parameter entities.  -p tells it to
              always parse them.  -p implies -x.
       -r     Normally xmlwf memory-maps the XML file before parsing; this can
              result  in  faster parsing on many platforms.  -r turns off mem-
              ory-mapping and uses normal file IO calls instead.   Of  course,
              memory-mapping  is  automatically  turned  off when reading from
              standard input.
              Use of memory-mapping can cause some platforms  to  report  sub-
              stantially higher memory usage for xmlwf, but this appears to be
              a matter of the operating system reporting memory in  a  strange
              way; there is not a leak in xmlwf.
       -s     Prints  an  error if the document is not standalone.  A document
              is standalone if it has no external subset and no references  to
              parameter entities.
       -t     Turns  on  timings.   This tells Expat to parse the entire file,
              but not perform any processing.  This gives  a  fairly  accurate
              idea  of  the raw speed of Expat itself without client overhead.
              -t turns off most of the output options (-d, -m, -c, ...).
       -v     Prints the version of the Expat library  being  used,  including
              some  information  on  the  compile-time  configuration  of  the
              library, and then exits.
       -w     Enables support for Windows code pages.   Normally,  xmlwf  will
              throw  an  error  if  it  runs across an encoding that it is not
              equipped to handle itself.  With -w, xmlwf will  try  to  use  a
              Windows code page.  See also -e.
       -x     Turns on parsing external entities.
              Non-validating  parsers  are  not  required  to resolve external
              entities, or even expand entities at all.  Expat always  expands
              internal  entities  (?),  but  external  entity  parsing must be
              enabled explicitly.
              External entities are simply entities  that  obtain  their  data
              from outside the XML file currently being parsed.
              This is an example of an internal entity:
              <!ENTITY vers '1.0.2'>
              And here are some examples of external entities:
              <!ENTITY header SYSTEM "header-&vers;.xml">  (parsed)
              <!ENTITY logo SYSTEM "logo.png" PNG>         (unparsed)
       --     (Two  hyphens.)   Terminates  the list of options.  This is only
              needed if a filename starts with a hyphen.  For example:
              xmlwf -- -myfile.xml
              will run xmlwf on the file -myfile.xml.
       Older versions of xmlwf do not support reading from standard input.
OUTPUT
       If an input file  is  not  well-formed,  xmlwf  prints  a  single  line
       describing  the  problem to standard output.  If a file is well formed,
       xmlwf outputs nothing.  Note that the result code is not set.
BUGS
       According to the W3C standard, an XML file without a declaration at the
       beginning is not considered well-formed.  However, xmlwf allows this to
       pass.
       xmlwf returns a 0 - noerr result, even if the file is not  well-formed.
       There is no good way for a program to use xmlwf to quickly check a file
       -- it must parse xmlwf's standard output.
       The errors should go to standard error, not standard output.
       There should be a way to get -d to send its output to  standard  output
       rather than forcing the user to send it to a file.
       I have no idea why anyone would want to use the -d, -c, and -m options.
       If someone could explain it to me, I'd like to add this information  to
       this manpage.
ALTERNATIVES
       Here are some XML validators on the web:
       http://www.hcrc.ed.ac.uk/~richard/xml-check.html
       http://www.stg.brown.edu/service/xmlvalid/
       http://www.scripting.com/frontier5/xml/code/xmlValidator.html
       http://www.xml.com/pub/a/tools/ruwf/check.html
SEE ALSO
       The Expat home page:        http://www.libexpat.org/
       The W3 XML specification:   http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml
AUTHOR
       This manual page was written by Scott Bronson <bronson AT rinspin.com> for
       the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).  Permission is
       granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms
       of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1.

                                24 January 2003                       XMLWF(1)