BUG: MSXML: NMTOKEN Values with Multiple Colon (:) Characters Are Treated as XML Names (313371)

MORE INFORMATION

The following extract from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) XML Language specifications specifies the valid characters that can constitute an NMTOKEN value, and indicates that an NMTOKEN value can contain multiple occurrences of the colon (:) character:

NameChar    ::=    Letter | Digit | '.' | '-' | '_' | ':' | CombiningChar | Extender 
Nmtoken    ::=    (NameChar)+ 
				

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

NOTE: This sample uses the MSXML 4.0 parser.

1. In Notepad, create an XML document named Employees.xml that contains the following XML in the root folder of drive C:

   <?xml version="1.0"?>
   
   <!DOCTYPE Employees [
   
   <!ELEMENT Employees (Employee+)>
   <!ELEMENT Employee EMPTY>
   <!ATTLIST Employee
        id ID #REQUIRED 
        first_name CDATA #REQUIRED
        last_name CDATA #REQUIRED
        profession CDATA #REQUIRED
        DateOfJoining NMTOKEN #REQUIRED     
   >
   
   ]>
   
   <Employees>
     <Employee id="_1" first_name="Jim" last_name="Stanton" profession="Software Engineer" DateOfJoining="8-20-199911:50:55"/>
   </Employees>
   					

2. In Visual Basic, create a new Standard EXE project. Form1 is created by default.
3. Add a project reference to Microsoft XML, version 4.0. If you have not installed MSXML 4.0, add a reference to the latest version of the MSXML parser that is installed on your computer.
4. Drag a command button onto Form1.
5. Paste the following code in the Click event procedure of the command button. Change the PROGID for the DOMDocument object if you are referencing an earlier version of MSXML in the project:

   Dim doc As MSXML2.DOMDocument40
   Set doc = New MSXML2.DOMDocument40
   
   doc.Load "c:\Employees.xml"
   If doc.parseError.errorCode <> 0 Then
    MsgBox doc.parseError.reason
   End If
   					

6. Save and run the project.
7. Click the command button when the form is displayed to parse and validate the XML document that you just created.