xml.dom.minidom: serializing a comment ending in '-' silently produces non-well-formed XML
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Description
Bug report
Bug description:
xml.dom.minidom guards comment serialization against -- (illegal inside an XML comment): Comment.writexml raises ValueError if "--" in self.data (test testSerializeCommentNodeWithDoubleHyphen). It misses a comment whose data ends with -: the trailing - fuses with the closing --> into --->, which contains --.
import xml.dom.minidom as m
doc = m.getDOMImplementation().createDocument(None, None, None)
doc.appendChild(doc.createComment("see note-"))
out = doc.toxml() # '<?xml version="1.0" ?><!--see note--->'
m.parseString(out) # xml.parsers.expat.ExpatError: not well-formed
minidom silently emits XML it cannot reparse. The existing -- guard already takes the stance that serialization must fail loudly on comment content it cannot represent; the trailing-- case is a gap in that guard.
CPython versions tested on:
CPython main
Operating systems tested on:
Linux, macOS
Linked PRs
- gh-156813
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start with xml.dom.minidom's Comment.writexml implementation and the existing test named testSerializeCommentNodeWithDoubleHyphen. Reproduce serialization of a comment ending in '-' and run the minidom tests; done means the invalid trailing-hyphen case is rejected consistently with comments containing '--'.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- python
- Domain
- backend
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 2/5
- Estimated time
- 1-3 hours
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Clearly specified
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100