Real binary block in XML (C++)?

Question

Is it possible to integrate a real (not encoded in characters) binary block (best with defined byte-order and word-length) into an XML file?

Did you try with a <![CDATA[]]> section? Though I doubt you can have 'real' binary data in it, since XML is basically a text oriented format. — πάντα ῥεῖ
– πάντα ῥεῖ, Commented Feb 11, 2013 at 17:20
@ThomasMatthews I think the length of the block should be encoded in some attribute. The VTK file format specifications allow something similar. — Massimiliano
– Massimiliano, Commented Feb 11, 2013 at 18:08

evil otto · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-11 17:38:02Z

7

No, it is not possible while keeping within the xml standard.

The allowable set of characters in a parsed XML entity is tab, carriage return, linefeed, and valid unicode characters. There are various bytes that fall outside of this allowable range, most prominently 0x0, but also 0x1 - 0x8, 0xB - 0xC, and 0xE - 0x1F (i.e., most values that are classically ASCII control characters).

You can't even include them as numeric entities, since they aren't valid characters. i.e., the following will not validate:

<test>
    Testing ^A: &#x1;
</test>

See http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/REC-xml11-20060816/#charsets

answered Feb 11, 2013 at 17:38

evil otto

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