XmlDocument and utf-8

[MaxMax]

A question: all the XML files I've seen use this declaration:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

BUT files created using XmlDocument have:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

(you see? lowercase UTF)

I've even tried "manually correcting" the utf to UTF with notepad and then
opening with XmlDocument and saving.

Are they equivalent? Am I doing something wrong?

--- bye

 

[Stephany Young]

Yes. No.

 

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hi Max,

Yes, both "UTF-8" and "utf-8" is ok for the charset in XML declaration
section. And the .net framework XmlDocument just always convert the charset
value to lower case for consistency purpose.

In addition, the <?xml ....?> declaration's charset value is only a
suggestion value for some XML processing programs, the actual
charset/encoding format of a XML document/file still rely on how you write
out the document(through file I/O api). In other words, the actual
charset/encoding of a XML file may be different from the charset
declaration in the <?xml ....?> section

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead



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[MaxMax]

Yes, both "UTF-8" and "utf-8" is ok for the charset in XML declaration

section. And the .net framework XmlDocument just always convert the
charset
value to lower case for consistency purpose.

In addition, the <?xml ....?> declaration's charset value is only a
suggestion value for some XML processing programs, the actual
charset/encoding format of a XML document/file still rely on how you write
out the document(through file I/O api). In other words, the actual
charset/encoding of a XML file may be different from the charset
declaration in the <?xml ....?> section

Just checked the XML standard (fourth edition) (just to be sure... 99% of
the internet can't be wrong... or can it?)
"XML processors SHOULD match character encoding names in a case-insensitive
way "

The "official" name of UTF-* is UTF-* uppercase, but the parser should parse
it in a case insensitive way.

--- bye

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

Yes, both "UTF-8" and "utf-8" is ok for the charset in XML declaration
section. And the .net framework XmlDocument just always convert the charset
value to lower case for consistency purpose.

In addition, the <?xml ....?> declaration's charset value is only a
suggestion value for some XML processing programs, the actual
charset/encoding format of a XML document/file still rely on how you write
out the document(through file I/O api). In other words, the actual
charset/encoding of a XML file may be different from the charset
declaration in the <?xml ....?> section

It's not really a "suggestion" - it's the encoding which should be
used to parse the rest of the document. If you claim (in the
declaration) to use UTF-8 and actually use some other encoding, XML
parsers are almost certainly going to fail to understand the data in
the way you expect.

Jon