From: Ed Howland <ed.howland@...>
Date: 2009-12-27T07:13:57+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] Ruby 1.8.7-p248 released.

Hi,

Thanks for the update. This is kind of a sniggly little bug, but can
really smack you in the face if you are doing any XML parsing and
working with outside vendors, like with REST web services.

The REXML library has a bug parsing the xml declaration standalone
attribute. It requires a space between the '=' and the value of the
attribute.

<?xml version="1.0 standalone= "no" ?>

<?xml version="1.0 standalone="no" ?>

The latter is valid XML as well as the former, but does not parse
correctly in REXML.

 It is documented in Trac Ticket #152 for the REXML Trac Wiki. This
has been open for more than 20 months. I saw it on another ticket, but
at the moment I can't find that one.

I submitted a patch and a comment with some RSpec tests to demonstrate
the issue. It exists in
 ruby-1.8.7-p174, ruby-1.8.7-p248, ruby-1.9.1-p376 : ruby 1.9.1p376
and ruby 1.9.1p243.

In my case, i was dealing with the U.S. government and the
requirements were strict XML. It is any easy bug to work around/patch,
once you find it, but annoying, nonetheless.

Any chance, this small fix can get incorporated into another round of
bug fixes? 20 months is a long time to leave a defect like this open
w/o even assigning it.

Thanks,
Ed

Happy Holidays to you too!

-- 
Ed Howland
http://greenprogrammer.wordpress.com
http://twitter.com/ed_howland