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Re: This week's XML Puzzler

• To: Micah Dubinko <micah@d...>
• Subject: Re: This week's XML Puzzler
• From: Jeff Rafter <lists@j...>
• Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2005 23:32:37 -0800
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <420853E4.5050204@d...>
• References: <420853E4.5050204@d...>
• Reply-to: lists@j...
• User-agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (Windows/20041206)

> a. What is the size of the smallest valid XML entity?
> b. well-formed?
> c. 1.1 valid?
> d. 1.1 well-formed?

0 bytes. The following entity's length is 0 bytes:

<!ENTITY foo "">

Of course if you meant "external entity" then the answer is different:

a. 0 bytes
b. 0 bytes
c. 21 bytes (the length of the textDecl: <?xml version="1.1"?>)
d. 21 bytes

If you meant "document" or "document entity" then the answers differ 
still more

a. 27 bytes (<!DOCTYPE a SYSTEM "a"><a/>)
b. 4 bytes (<a/>)
c. 48 bytes (<?xml version="1.1"?><!DOCTYPE a SYSTEM "a"><a/>)
d. 25 bytes (<?xml version="1.1"?><a/>)

The answer to "a" would change slightly if you wanted to know the whole 
document total. Also all of these answers would change if you had in 
mind a different serialization, at which point some on this list would 
argue that you are not talking XML. Also, I don't know if you are asking 
about a serialized document or if I could use various parser features, 
for example, to supply a DOCTYPE pogrammatically.

So I go with my first answer. 0 bytes.

All the best,
Jeff Rafter

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