vbs changes < to> to > when importing file contents

Question

I have absolutly no idea when it comes to VBScript so I was quite happy when I frankensteined two simple code snippets found online to insert the entire contents of a text file

Answer 1

You don't "overcome" this. < and > characters must be encoded, otherwise there'd be issues with parsing the XML tags (which are demarcated by angular brackets, i.e. < and > characters).

Answer 2

A CDATA section allows < and >:

CDATA sections allow developers to include the markup characters <, >, and & within element content without using character or entity references. Scripts, style sheets, program code, and sample XML code are frequently contained in CDATA sections.

(Docs)

Code:

  Dim oXML : Set oXML = CreateObject("Msxml2.DOMDocument")
  Set oXML.documentElement = oXML.createElement("a")
  Dim nd
  Set nd = oXML.createElement("b")
  nd.appendChild oXML.createTextNode("<>")
  oXML.documentElement.appendChild nd
  Set nd = oXML.createElement("c")
  nd.appendChild oXML.createCDATASection("<>")
  oXML.documentElement.appendChild nd

output:

<a><b>&lt;&gt;</b><c><![CDATA[<>]]></c></a>