Question

I have the following XML code.

<firstname>
 <default length="6">Örwin</default>
 <short>Örwin</short>
 <shorter>Örwin</shorter>
 <shortest>�.</shortest>
</firstname>

Why does the content of the “shortest” node break? It should be a simple “Ö” instead of the tedious �. XML is UTF-8 encoded and the function which processes the output of that node also writes the content of “short” and “shorter”. Where the “Ö” is clearly visible.

Answer 1

My guess is that the XML isn’t properly UTF-8 encoded. Please show the bytes within the <shortest> element in the raw file… I suspect you’ll find they’re not a validly encoded character. If you could show a short but complete program which generates this XML from valid input, that would be very helpful. (Preferably saying which platform it is, too 🙂

EDIT: Something very odd is going on in this file. Here are the hex values for the “shorter” and “shortest” values:

Shorter: C3 96 72 77 69 63

Shortest: EF BF BD 2E

Now “C3 96” is the valid UTF-8 encoding for U+00D6 which is “Latin capital letter O with diaeresis” as you want.

However, EF BF BD is the UTF-8 encoding for U+FFFD which is “replacement character” – definitely not what you want. (The 2E is just the ASCII dot.)

So, this is actually valid UTF-8 – but it doesn’t contain the characters you want. Again, you should examine what created the file…