How to escape the < and ≤ symbols in xml?

Question

I want to create a string <res> in android as below:

<string name="bmi0">0: BMI≤18.5</string>
<string name="bmi1">1: 18.5<BMI≤24</string>
<string name="bmi2">2: 24<BMI≤27</string>

But i shown the error of "Tag start is not closed".

I tried to put a \ symbol in front, but it doesn't work, it has shown the same error.

<string name="bmi0">0: BMI\≤18.5</string>
<string name="bmi1">1: 18.5<BMI\≤24</string>
<string name="bmi2">2: 24<BMI\≤27</string>

How to escape the special XML symbols ?

Solution 1

You will have to escape those symbols as following:

• < will be <
• > will be >

The ≤ sign doesn't need escaping.

Solution 2

You have to escape those symbols for XML.

What characters do I need to escape in XML documents?

Solution 3

As said, for the < and >, you can use this:

<   &lt;
>   &gt;

You need to do this because the < and > aren't allowed in XML, so you need to escape them. You do that by typing: & + specific code for your character + ;, when you show this string, this will be recognized as being the special character (< or >).

You also wanted the smaller or equal sign (≤), which is afaik allowed in XML, so just use ≤.

These are the characters you have to escape:

"   =   "
'   =   '
<   =   &lt;
>   =   &gt;
&   =   &amp;

Solution 4

Use this:

<   &lt;
>   &gt;

Solution 5

Use Unicode sequences for special characters.

You can find some of them here: http://jrgraphix.net/r/Unicode/2200-22FF

Use it like this:

\u2264

will be converted to ≤

View more solutions

Comments

[unwind]

Doesn't this entierly miss the point of the "less than or equal" sign being used, ≤ ?

[unwind]

@peter.petrov Ah, I guess the OP's errors are only from the use of regular <.

[peter.petrov]

I think I answered first on this question btw :) @kocko Isn't this &le; actually &lt; ?!

[user2301281]

it shown "unescaped & or nonterminated character/entity reference" error. when i use "&lt"

[Konstantin Yovkov]

you will have to add a colon ( ; ) after it.

[Selvin]

why it has +1? \uxxxx is not for xml

[Selvin]

why it has +1? \uxxxx is not for xml

[Lovis]

@Selvin this is tagged android, and in strings.xml it 100% works PLUS its the only way to do it with some special chars, like "non breaking-hyphen" \uXXXX is even SUGGESTED BY LINT (e.g if you type "...")

[Selvin]

sure the only way .... <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <root><test name="&#8209;"/></root> xml notation is &#XXXX; or &#xHHHH;

[Lovis]

@selvin yes you're right (plus I just saw, that lint is not suggesting it anymore) BUT still, why is it thing working, if its not for xml?

[Selvin]

from The Source w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#dt-charref ... there is no single word about \u notation

[Lovis]

I still don't see why it's wrong. It answers the question and works in android. (why? Probably because the string is first parsed and then translated)