check XML syntax with xmllint

Question

I am having a problem with some XML print files where the source system omits to convert some characters to their XML syntax equivalent (e.g. & is not converted to &am

Answer 1

If you just need to check validity(correctness) of any xml document using xmllint, here is one more way.

if xmllint --noout /tmp/test.xml > /dev/null 2>&1;
then
    echo "correct"
else
    echo "incorrect"
fi

Answer 2

xmllint --noout your_test_file.xml

Check for return code of this command. See documentation. Value of 1 is returned when basic parsing errors are met. E.g.:

echo $?

Answer 3

xmllint --valid --encode utf-8 TEST.xml

will validate and output TEST.xml in utf-8

cat TEST.xml

<xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE JM SYSTEM "mydtd">

<JM> . . . </JM>