environment | February 14, 2026

Are quotes allowed in XML?

Are quotes allowed in XML?

Character data inside XML elements can contain quote characters without escaping them. The only characters that are not permitted inside an XML element are ‘<‘, ‘&’ and ‘>’ (and the ‘>’ character is only disallowed if it’s part of a “]]>” sequence of characters.

How do you put quotes in XML?

From the XML specification: To allow attribute values to contain both single and double quotes, the apostrophe or single-quote character (‘) may be represented as “‘”, and the double-quote character (“) as “””.

Can XML have single quotes?

The values of XML attributes are delimited by either single or double quotes. This means that you can use double quotes as content when you use single quotes as the delimter and vice versa. You can also use the entities ‘ and ” as a content. In Java strings will be enclosed in double quotes.

How do you escape quotes in XML?

Here are the common characters which need to be escaped in XML, starting with double quotes:

  1. double quotes ( ” ) are escaped to “
  2. ampersand ( & ) is escaped to &
  3. single quotes ( ‘ ) are escaped to ‘
  4. less than ( < ) is escaped to <
  5. greater than ( > ) is escaped to >

Is illegal in XML attribute values?

Some special characters are not permitted in XML attribute values. Note that the ampersand (&) and less-than (<) characters are not permitted in XML attribute values.

Do you need to escape quotes in XML?

When attribute data is enclosed in single quotes ‘ then any single quote ‘ characters within the data must be escaped. The ampersand & character must be escaped. The greater than and less than characters do no have to be escaped but its good practice to do it. The double quotes in the data must be escaped.

Do I need to escape in XML?

You don’t need to, and your XML is still valid if you don’t). This is clearly specified in the official recommendations for XML by W3C.

Is apostrophe allowed in XML?

When you use wizards to customize any string in your XML file, you can use the following special symbols: <, >, &, ‘, “….Using Special Characters in XML.

Symbol (name)Escape Sequence
> (greater-than)> or >
& (ampersand)&
‘ (apostrophe or single quote)
” (double-quote)

Is apostrophe valid in XML?

The apostrophe or single-quote character (‘) can be symbolised with this character entity reference when you need to embed a single-quote or apostrophe inside a string which is already single-quoted. Most control characters are prohibited in XML: see the Specification for exact details.

Can XML contain Unicode?

Unicode code points in the following ranges are valid in XML 1.0 documents: U+0009, U+000A, U+000D: these are the only C0 controls accepted in XML 1.0; U+0020–U+D7FF, U+E000–U+FFFD: this excludes some (not all) non-characters in the BMP (all surrogates, U+FFFE and U+FFFF are forbidden);