What does <![CDATA[]]> in XML mean?

Question

I often find this strange CDATA tag in XML files:

I have observed that this CD

Answer 1

CDATA stands for Character Data and it means that the data in between these strings includes data that could be interpreted as XML markup, but should not be.

The key differences between CDATA and comments are:

• As Richard points out, CDATA is still part of the document, while a comment is not.
• In CDATA you cannot include the string ]]> (CDEnd), while in a comment -- is invalid.
• Parameter Entity references are not recognized inside of comments.

This means given these four snippets of XML from one well-formed document:

---

---

---

An example of escaped CENDs


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