Comments

WARNING! This test no longer represents the standard way to parse comments. I have left it here in its original form for historical reasons. Do not attempt to conform to this test!

If you have any comments to make regarding this test, e-mail ian@hixie.ch.

Prerequisites

Browsers that are subjected to this test should support the SGML comments: <!-- -- -- -->.

1. The comment delimited is --

Note that there are four (4) sub-tests to this section. Because of the nature of these tests, some may not appear. If so, there is a bug. I repeat: there should be four separate tests in section 1! Each consists of a bit of explanatory text, a purple box with yellow text, and some explanatory markup.

The comment delimiter is --, not <!-- and -->. In the following sentence, the word INCORRECTLY should not appear:

This browser parses comments INCORRECTLY! Yes, I said incorrectly.

The markup used was:

     <P>This browser parses comments <!-- -- --> INCORRECTLY!
     Yes, I said in<!-- -- -->correctly.</P>

If you take -- to be the comment delimiter, you can easily see that the words in the middle are actually inside a comment.

Here is another:

This browser parses comments INCORRECTLY! Yes, I said incorrectly.

The markup used was:

     <P>This browser parses comments
     <!---- -->INCORRECTLY! Yes, I said in<!------>correctly.</P>

Note that it is a serious error if this is the paragraph immediately after the test line! There should be some commentary (including a snippet of the source of the last test) between this paragraph and the previous test.

Here is yet another:

This browser parses comments INCORRECTLY! Yes, I said incorrectly.

The markup used was:

     <P>This browser parses comments
     <!------>INCORRECTLY! Yes, I said in<!------>correctly.</P>

Note that it is a serious error if this is the paragraph immediately after the test line! There should be some commentary (including a snippet of the source of the last test) between this paragraph and the previous test.

And finally, here is yet another. Hopefully that should cover all bases...

This browser parses comments INCORRECTLY! Yes, I said incorrectly.

The markup used was:

     <P>This browser parses comments
     <!-- ---->INCORRECTLY! Yes, I said in<!------>correctly.</P>

Note that it is a serious error if this is the paragraph immediately after the test line! There should be some commentary (including a snippet of the source of the last test) between this paragraph and the previous test.

2. Comments should not mess up whitespace collapsing!

In the following, the words should not be spaced out any more than normal.

These words are not separated by comments. They should be spaced out as much as these words.

3. Comment Terminator

The comment delimiter is --, so the end delimited is certainly not ->. In the following sentence, the word INCORRECTLY should not appear:

This browser parses comments correctly.

The markup used was:

     <P>This browser parses comments <!-- -> INCORRECTLY!
     Yes, I said in<!- -->correctly.</P>

If you take -- to be the comment delimiter, you can easily see that the words in the middle are actually inside a comment.

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Bugzilla: Bug 2749 (parsing errors - reported fixed, awaiting strict DTD mode to verify) ; Bug 3304 (page does not display)

Last updated in January 1999.