EBNF Variant that Used to Define the XML Grammar

External

• http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#sec-notation

Internal

• Formal Languages and Translators

Overview

W3C uses an variant of the Extended Backus-Naur Form notation to express the formal grammar of XML.

Notation

Each rule in the grammar defines one of the symbols, in the form:

symbol ::= expression

More details about Backus-Naur Form are available here:

Context-Free Grammars

Literal strings are quoted.

Within the expression on the right-hand side of a rule, the following expressions are used to match strings of one or more characters:

#xN