xref: /freebsd/contrib/expat/doc/xmlwf.xml (revision a91a2465)
1<!--
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4                        / _ \\  /| '_ \ / _` | __|
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6                        \___/_/\_\ .__/ \__,_|\__|
7                                 |_| XML parser
8
9   Copyright (c) 2001      Scott Bronson <bronson@rinspin.com>
10   Copyright (c) 2002-2003 Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake@users.sourceforge.net>
11   Copyright (c) 2009      Karl Waclawek <karl@waclawek.net>
12   Copyright (c) 2016-2024 Sebastian Pipping <sebastian@pipping.org>
13   Copyright (c) 2016      Ardo van Rangelrooij <ardo@debian.org>
14   Copyright (c) 2017      Rhodri James <rhodri@wildebeest.org.uk>
15   Copyright (c) 2020      Joe Orton <jorton@redhat.com>
16   Copyright (c) 2021      Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>
17   Unlike most of Expat,
18   this file is copyrighted under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.1.
19-->
20<!DOCTYPE refentry PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.2//EN"
21          "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd" [
22  <!ENTITY dhfirstname "<firstname>Scott</firstname>">
23  <!ENTITY dhsurname   "<surname>Bronson</surname>">
24  <!ENTITY dhdate      "<date>February 6, 2024</date>">
25  <!-- Please adjust this^^ date whenever cutting a new release. -->
26  <!ENTITY dhsection   "<manvolnum>1</manvolnum>">
27  <!ENTITY dhemail     "<email>bronson@rinspin.com</email>">
28  <!ENTITY dhusername  "Scott Bronson">
29  <!ENTITY dhucpackage "<refentrytitle>XMLWF</refentrytitle>">
30  <!ENTITY dhpackage   "xmlwf">
31
32  <!ENTITY debian      "<productname>Debian GNU/Linux</productname>">
33  <!ENTITY gnu         "<acronym>GNU</acronym>">
34]>
35
36<refentry>
37  <refentryinfo>
38    <address>
39      &dhemail;
40    </address>
41    <author>
42      &dhfirstname;
43      &dhsurname;
44    </author>
45    <copyright>
46      <year>2001</year>
47      <holder>&dhusername;</holder>
48    </copyright>
49    &dhdate;
50  </refentryinfo>
51  <refmeta>
52    &dhucpackage;
53
54    &dhsection;
55  </refmeta>
56  <refnamediv>
57    <refname>&dhpackage;</refname>
58
59    <refpurpose>Determines if an XML document is well-formed</refpurpose>
60  </refnamediv>
61  <refsynopsisdiv>
62    <cmdsynopsis>
63      <command>&dhpackage;</command>
64      <arg><replaceable>OPTIONS</replaceable></arg>
65      <arg><replaceable>FILE</replaceable> ...</arg>
66    </cmdsynopsis>
67    <cmdsynopsis>
68      <command>&dhpackage;</command>
69      <group choice="plain">
70        <arg><option>-h</option></arg>
71        <arg><option>--help</option></arg>
72      </group>
73    </cmdsynopsis>
74    <cmdsynopsis>
75      <command>&dhpackage;</command>
76      <group choice="plain">
77        <arg><option>-v</option></arg>
78        <arg><option>--version</option></arg>
79      </group>
80    </cmdsynopsis>
81  </refsynopsisdiv>
82
83  <refsect1>
84    <title>DESCRIPTION</title>
85
86    <para>
87	<command>&dhpackage;</command> uses the Expat library to
88	determine if an XML document is well-formed.  It is
89	non-validating.
90	</para>
91
92	<para>
93	If you do not specify any files on the command-line, and you
94	have a recent version of <command>&dhpackage;</command>, the
95	input file will be read from standard input.
96	</para>
97
98  </refsect1>
99
100  <refsect1>
101    <title>WELL-FORMED DOCUMENTS</title>
102
103	<para>
104	  A well-formed document must adhere to the
105	  following rules:
106	</para>
107
108	<itemizedlist>
109      <listitem><para>
110	    The file begins with an XML declaration.  For instance,
111		<literal>&lt;?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?&gt;</literal>.
112		<emphasis>NOTE</emphasis>:
113		<command>&dhpackage;</command> does not currently
114		check for a valid XML declaration.
115      </para></listitem>
116      <listitem><para>
117		Every start tag is either empty (&lt;tag/&gt;)
118		or has a corresponding end tag.
119      </para></listitem>
120      <listitem><para>
121	    There is exactly one root element.  This element must contain
122		all other elements in the document.  Only comments, white
123		space, and processing instructions may come after the close
124		of the root element.
125      </para></listitem>
126      <listitem><para>
127		All elements nest properly.
128      </para></listitem>
129      <listitem><para>
130		All attribute values are enclosed in quotes (either single
131		or double).
132      </para></listitem>
133    </itemizedlist>
134
135	<para>
136	  If the document has a DTD, and it strictly complies with that
137	  DTD, then the document is also considered <emphasis>valid</emphasis>.
138	  <command>&dhpackage;</command> is a non-validating parser --
139	  it does not check the DTD.  However, it does support
140	  external entities (see the <option>-x</option> option).
141	</para>
142  </refsect1>
143
144  <refsect1>
145    <title>OPTIONS</title>
146
147<para>
148When an option includes an argument, you may specify the argument either
149separately ("<option>-d</option> <replaceable>output</replaceable>") or concatenated with the
150option ("<option>-d</option><replaceable>output</replaceable>").  <command>&dhpackage;</command>
151supports both.
152</para>
153
154    <variablelist>
155
156      <varlistentry>
157        <term><option>-a</option> <replaceable>factor</replaceable></term>
158        <listitem>
159          <para>
160            Sets the maximum tolerated amplification factor
161            for protection against billion laughs attacks (default: 100.0).
162            The amplification factor is calculated as ..
163          </para>
164          <literallayout>
165            amplification := (direct + indirect) / direct
166          </literallayout>
167          <para>
168            .. while parsing, whereas
169            &lt;direct&gt; is the number of bytes read
170              from the primary document in parsing and
171            &lt;indirect&gt; is the number of bytes
172              added by expanding entities and reading of external DTD files,
173              combined.
174          </para>
175          <para>
176            <emphasis>NOTE</emphasis>:
177            If you ever need to increase this value for non-attack payload,
178            please file a bug report.
179          </para>
180        </listitem>
181      </varlistentry>
182
183      <varlistentry>
184        <term><option>-b</option> <replaceable>bytes</replaceable></term>
185        <listitem>
186          <para>
187            Sets the number of output bytes (including amplification)
188            needed to activate protection against billion laughs attacks
189            (default: 8 MiB).
190            This can be thought of as an &quot;activation threshold&quot;.
191          </para>
192          <para>
193            <emphasis>NOTE</emphasis>:
194            If you ever need to increase this value for non-attack payload,
195            please file a bug report.
196          </para>
197        </listitem>
198      </varlistentry>
199
200      <varlistentry>
201        <term><option>-c</option></term>
202        <listitem>
203		<para>
204  If the input file is well-formed and <command>&dhpackage;</command>
205  doesn't encounter any errors, the input file is simply copied to
206  the output directory unchanged.
207  This implies no namespaces (turns off <option>-n</option>) and
208  requires <option>-d</option> to specify an output directory.
209  		</para>
210        </listitem>
211      </varlistentry>
212
213      <varlistentry>
214        <term><option>-d</option> <replaceable>output-dir</replaceable></term>
215        <listitem>
216		<para>
217  Specifies a directory to contain transformed
218  representations of the input files.
219  By default, <option>-d</option> outputs a canonical representation
220  (described below).
221  You can select different output formats using <option>-c</option>,
222  <option>-m</option> and <option>-N</option>.
223	  </para>
224	  <para>
225  The output filenames will
226  be exactly the same as the input filenames or "STDIN" if the input is
227  coming from standard input.  Therefore, you must be careful that the
228  output file does not go into the same directory as the input
229  file.  Otherwise, <command>&dhpackage;</command> will delete the
230  input file before it generates the output file (just like running
231  <literal>cat &lt; file &gt; file</literal> in most shells).
232	  </para>
233	  <para>
234  Two structurally equivalent XML documents have a byte-for-byte
235  identical canonical XML representation.
236  Note that ignorable white space is considered significant and
237  is treated equivalently to data.
238  More on canonical XML can be found at
239  http://www.jclark.com/xml/canonxml.html .
240	  </para>
241        </listitem>
242      </varlistentry>
243
244      <varlistentry>
245        <term><option>-e</option> <replaceable>encoding</replaceable></term>
246        <listitem>
247		<para>
248   Specifies the character encoding for the document, overriding
249   any document encoding declaration.  <command>&dhpackage;</command>
250   supports four built-in encodings:
251   	<literal>US-ASCII</literal>,
252	<literal>UTF-8</literal>,
253	<literal>UTF-16</literal>, and
254	<literal>ISO-8859-1</literal>.
255   Also see the <option>-w</option> option.
256	   </para>
257        </listitem>
258      </varlistentry>
259
260      <varlistentry>
261        <term><option>-g</option> <replaceable>bytes</replaceable></term>
262        <listitem>
263          <para>
264            Sets the buffer size to request per call pair to
265            <function>XML_GetBuffer</function> and <function>read</function>
266            (default: 8 KiB).
267          </para>
268        </listitem>
269      </varlistentry>
270
271      <varlistentry>
272        <term><option>-h</option></term>
273        <term><option>--help</option></term>
274        <listitem>
275          <para>
276            Prints short usage information on command <command>&dhpackage;</command>,
277            and then exits.
278            Similar to this man page but more concise.
279          </para>
280        </listitem>
281      </varlistentry>
282
283      <varlistentry>
284        <term><option>-k</option></term>
285        <listitem>
286          <para>
287            When processing multiple files, <command>&dhpackage;</command>
288            by default halts after the the first file with an error.
289            This tells <command>&dhpackage;</command> to report the error
290            but to keep processing.
291            This can be useful, for example, when testing a filter that converts
292            many files to XML and you want to quickly find out which conversions
293            failed.
294          </para>
295        </listitem>
296      </varlistentry>
297
298      <varlistentry>
299        <term><option>-m</option></term>
300        <listitem>
301		<para>
302  Outputs some strange sort of XML file that completely
303  describes the input file, including character positions.
304  Requires <option>-d</option> to specify an output file.
305	   </para>
306        </listitem>
307      </varlistentry>
308
309      <varlistentry>
310        <term><option>-n</option></term>
311        <listitem>
312		<para>
313  Turns on namespace processing.  (describe namespaces)
314  <option>-c</option> disables namespaces.
315	   </para>
316        </listitem>
317      </varlistentry>
318
319      <varlistentry>
320        <term><option>-N</option></term>
321        <listitem>
322          <para>
323  Adds a doctype and notation declarations to canonical XML output.
324  This matches the example output used by the formal XML test cases.
325  Requires <option>-d</option> to specify an output file.
326          </para>
327        </listitem>
328      </varlistentry>
329
330      <varlistentry>
331        <term><option>-p</option></term>
332        <listitem>
333		<para>
334    Tells <command>&dhpackage;</command> to process external DTDs and parameter
335    entities.
336	 </para>
337	 <para>
338   Normally <command>&dhpackage;</command> never parses parameter
339   entities.  <option>-p</option> tells it to always parse them.
340   <option>-p</option> implies <option>-x</option>.
341	   </para>
342        </listitem>
343      </varlistentry>
344
345      <varlistentry>
346        <term><option>-q</option></term>
347        <listitem>
348          <para>
349            Disable reparse deferral, and allow quadratic parse runtime
350            on large tokens (default: reparse deferral enabled).
351          </para>
352        </listitem>
353      </varlistentry>
354
355      <varlistentry>
356        <term><option>-r</option></term>
357        <listitem>
358		<para>
359   Normally <command>&dhpackage;</command> memory-maps the XML file
360   before parsing; this can result in faster parsing on many
361   platforms.
362   <option>-r</option> turns off memory-mapping and uses normal file
363   IO calls instead.
364   Of course, memory-mapping is automatically turned off
365   when reading from standard input.
366	   </para>
367		<para>
368   Use of memory-mapping can cause some platforms to report
369   substantially higher memory usage for
370   <command>&dhpackage;</command>, but this appears to be a matter of
371   the operating system reporting memory in a strange way; there is
372   not a leak in <command>&dhpackage;</command>.
373           </para>
374        </listitem>
375      </varlistentry>
376
377      <varlistentry>
378        <term><option>-s</option></term>
379        <listitem>
380		<para>
381  Prints an error if the document is not standalone.
382  A document is standalone if it has no external subset and no
383  references to parameter entities.
384	   </para>
385        </listitem>
386      </varlistentry>
387
388      <varlistentry>
389        <term><option>-t</option></term>
390        <listitem>
391		<para>
392  Turns on timings.  This tells Expat to parse the entire file,
393  but not perform any processing.
394  This gives a fairly accurate idea of the raw speed of Expat itself
395  without client overhead.
396  <option>-t</option> turns off most of the output options
397  (<option>-d</option>, <option>-m</option>, <option>-c</option>, ...).
398	   </para>
399        </listitem>
400      </varlistentry>
401
402      <varlistentry>
403        <term><option>-v</option></term>
404        <term><option>--version</option></term>
405        <listitem>
406		<para>
407  Prints the version of the Expat library being used, including some
408  information on the compile-time configuration of the library, and
409  then exits.
410	   </para>
411        </listitem>
412      </varlistentry>
413
414      <varlistentry>
415        <term><option>-w</option></term>
416        <listitem>
417		<para>
418  Enables support for Windows code pages.
419  Normally, <command>&dhpackage;</command> will throw an error if it
420  runs across an encoding that it is not equipped to handle itself.  With
421  <option>-w</option>, <command>&dhpackage;</command> will try to use a Windows code
422  page.  See also <option>-e</option>.
423	   </para>
424        </listitem>
425      </varlistentry>
426
427      <varlistentry>
428        <term><option>-x</option></term>
429        <listitem>
430		<para>
431  Turns on parsing external entities.
432  </para>
433<para>
434  Non-validating parsers are not required to resolve external
435  entities, or even expand entities at all.
436  Expat always expands internal entities (?),
437  but external entity parsing must be enabled explicitly.
438  </para>
439  <para>
440  External entities are simply entities that obtain their
441  data from outside the XML file currently being parsed.
442  </para>
443  <para>
444  This is an example of an internal entity:
445<literallayout>
446&lt;!ENTITY vers '1.0.2'&gt;
447</literallayout>
448  </para>
449  <para>
450  And here are some examples of external entities:
451
452<literallayout>
453&lt;!ENTITY header SYSTEM "header-&amp;vers;.xml"&gt;  (parsed)
454&lt;!ENTITY logo SYSTEM "logo.png" PNG&gt;         (unparsed)
455</literallayout>
456
457	   </para>
458        </listitem>
459      </varlistentry>
460
461      <varlistentry>
462        <term><option>--</option></term>
463        <listitem>
464		<para>
465    (Two hyphens.)
466    Terminates the list of options.  This is only needed if a filename
467    starts with a hyphen.  For example:
468	   </para>
469<literallayout>
470&dhpackage; -- -myfile.xml
471</literallayout>
472		<para>
473    will run <command>&dhpackage;</command> on the file
474    <filename>-myfile.xml</filename>.
475	   </para>
476        </listitem>
477      </varlistentry>
478    </variablelist>
479
480	<para>
481    Older versions of <command>&dhpackage;</command> do not support
482    reading from standard input.
483	</para>
484  </refsect1>
485
486  <refsect1>
487  <title>OUTPUT</title>
488    <para>
489	<command>&dhpackage;</command> outputs nothing for files which are problem-free.
490        If any input file is not well-formed, or if the output for any
491	input file cannot be opened, <command>&dhpackage;</command> prints a single
492	line describing	the problem to standard output.
493    </para>
494    <para>
495        If the <option>-k</option> option is not provided, <command>&dhpackage;</command>
496	halts upon encountering a well-formedness or output-file error.
497	If <option>-k</option> is provided, <command>&dhpackage;</command> continues
498	processing the remaining input files, describing problems found with any of them.
499    </para>
500  </refsect1>
501
502  <refsect1>
503  <title>EXIT STATUS</title>
504    <para>For options <option>-v</option>|<option>--version</option> or <option>-h</option>|<option>--help</option>, <command>&dhpackage;</command> always exits with status code 0.  For other cases, the following exit status codes are returned:
505    <variablelist>
506      <varlistentry>
507        <term><option>0</option></term>
508        <listitem><para>The input files are well-formed and the output (if requested) was written successfully.</para>
509        </listitem>
510      </varlistentry>
511      <varlistentry>
512        <term><option>1</option></term>
513        <listitem><para>An internal error occurred.</para>
514        </listitem>
515      </varlistentry>
516      <varlistentry>
517        <term><option>2</option></term>
518        <listitem><para>One or more input files were not well-formed or could not be parsed.</para>
519        </listitem>
520      </varlistentry>
521      <varlistentry>
522        <term><option>3</option></term>
523        <listitem><para>If using the <option>-d</option> option, an error occurred opening an output file.</para>
524        </listitem>
525      </varlistentry>
526      <varlistentry>
527        <term><option>4</option></term>
528        <listitem><para>There was a command-line argument error in how <command>&dhpackage;</command> was invoked.</para>
529        </listitem>
530      </varlistentry>
531    </variablelist>
532	</para>
533  </refsect1>
534
535
536  <refsect1>
537    <title>BUGS</title>
538	<para>
539	The errors should go to standard error, not standard output.
540	</para>
541	<para>
542	There should be a way to get <option>-d</option> to send its
543	output to standard output rather than forcing the user to send
544	it to a file.
545	</para>
546	<para>
547	I have no idea why anyone would want to use the
548	<option>-d</option>, <option>-c</option>, and
549	<option>-m</option> options.  If someone could explain it to
550	me, I'd like to add this information to this manpage.
551	</para>
552  </refsect1>
553
554  <refsect1>
555    <title>SEE ALSO</title>
556	<para>
557
558<literallayout>
559The Expat home page:                            https://libexpat.github.io/
560The W3 XML 1.0 specification (fourth edition):  https://www.w3.org/TR/2006/REC-xml-20060816/
561Billion laughs attack:                          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_laughs_attack
562</literallayout>
563
564	</para>
565  </refsect1>
566
567  <refsect1>
568    <title>AUTHOR</title>
569    <para>
570      This manual page was originally written by &dhusername; &dhemail;
571      in December 2001 for
572      the &debian; system (but may be used by others).  Permission is
573      granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under
574      the terms of the <acronym>GNU</acronym> Free Documentation
575      License, Version 1.1.
576	</para>
577  </refsect1>
578</refentry>
579