Xml – How to comment out a block of tags in XML

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How do I comment out a block of tags in XML?

I.e. How can I comment out <staticText> and everything inside it, in the code below?

  <detail>
    <band height="20">
      <staticText>
        <reportElement x="180" y="0" width="200" height="20"/>
        <text><![CDATA[Hello World!]]></text>
      </staticText>
    </band>
  </detail>

I could use  but that's just for single tags (as what I know), like // in Java and C. I would like something more like how /** comment **/ can be used in Java and C, so I can comment out longer blocks of XML code.

Best Answer

You can use that style of comment across multiple lines (which exists also in HTML)

<detail>
    <band height="20">
    <!--
      Hello,
         I am a multi-line XML comment
         <staticText>
            <reportElement x="180" y="0" width="200" height="20"/>
            <text><![CDATA[Hello World!]]></text>
          </staticText>
      -->
     </band>
</detail>

XML escape characters

There are only five:

"   &quot;
'   &apos;
<   &lt;
>   &gt;
&   &amp;

Escaping characters depends on where the special character is used.

The examples can be validated at the W3C Markup Validation Service.

Text

The safe way is to escape all five characters in text. However, the three characters ", ' and > needn't be escaped in text:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid>"'></valid>

Attributes

The safe way is to escape all five characters in attributes. However, the > character needn't be escaped in attributes:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid attribute=">"/>

The ' character needn't be escaped in attributes if the quotes are ":

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid attribute="'"/>

Likewise, the " needn't be escaped in attributes if the quotes are ':

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid attribute='"'/>

Comments

All five special characters must not be escaped in comments:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid>
<!-- "'<>& -->
</valid>

CDATA

All five special characters must not be escaped in CDATA sections:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid>
<![CDATA["'<>&]]>
</valid>

Processing instructions

All five special characters must not be escaped in XML processing instructions:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?process <"'&> ?>
<valid/>

XML vs. HTML

HTML has its own set of escape codes which cover a lot more characters.

What’s a quick way to comment/uncomment lines in Vim

For those tasks I use most of the time block selection.

Put your cursor on the first # character, press CtrlV (or CtrlQ for gVim), and go down until the last commented line and press x, that will delete all the # characters vertically.

For commenting a block of text is almost the same:

First, go to the first line you want to comment, press CtrlV. This will put the editor in the VISUAL BLOCK mode.
Then using the arrow key and select until the last line
Now press ShiftI, which will put the editor in INSERT mode and then press #. This will add a hash to the first line.
Then press Esc (give it a second), and it will insert a # character on all other selected lines.

For the stripped-down version of vim shipped with debian/ubuntu by default, type : s/^/# in the third step instead (any remaining highlighting of the first character of each line can be removed with :nohl).

Here are two small screen recordings for visual reference.

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