Usually, but not in this case. If you have a text that looks like XML, and you want to put it into an XML element, the XML file uses < and >. The XML parser unescapes that as < and >. However, it does not then consider the < and > as markup, and it shouldn't.
That's also what I said?
You said it in response to
>>> All the behaviour you are seeing is a consequence of this. You need
>>> to unescape the contents of the <string> tag to be able to treat it >>> as structured XML.
In that context, I interpreted
>> The unescaping is usually done for you by the xml parser that you >> use.
as "The parser should have done what you want; if the parser didn't, that is is bug in the parser".
The OP probably wants to feed that to a new xml parser instance to process it as markup. Or perhaps the way the original XML document is constructed is flawed.
Either of these, indeed - probably the latter.
Regards, Martin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
