RE: parsing "&A" in a string..

[bruce]

aha...

it's the beautifulsoup() that's taking the "&E" and giving the "&E;"...



-----Original Message-----
From: python-list-bounces+bedougl as=earthlink.ne t@python.org
[mailto:python-list-bounces+bedougl as=earthlink.ne t@python.org]On Behalf
Of Fredrik Lundh
Sent: Sunday, August 31, 2008 1:10 PM
To: python-list@python.org
Subject: Re: parsing "&A" in a string..


bruce wrote:

a pretty simple question, i'm guessing.
>
i have a text/html string that looks like:
....(A&E)
>
the issue i have is that when i parse it using xpath/node/toString,
i get the following
>
...(A&E;).

that's because your parser is interpreting the &E part as an entity
reference, and the serializer is then adding the missing semicolon.

bare ampersands must be written as "&" in the file.

</F>

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http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

[Tim Roberts]

Re: parsing &quot;&amp;A&qu ot; in a string..

"bruce" <bedouglas@eart hlink.netwrote:

>
>it's the beautifulsoup() that's taking the "&E" and giving the "&E;"...

Right, as it should. "A&E" is not valid HTML, and beautifulsoup expects
valid HTML.

This can be difficult to fix in the general case, because your page might
already contain "&amp;". If it is possible that some of them might be
wrong while some are right, you can do something like:

s = s.replace( '&amp;', '&' ).replace( '&', '&amp;' )
--
Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.