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Spaces, Newline Characters, and Other White Space

As dictated by the XML specification, the NETCONF server ignores white space (spaces, tabs, newline characters, and other characters that represent white space) that occurs between tag elements in the tag stream generated by a client application. Client applications can, but do not need to, include white space between tag elements. However, they must not insert white space within an opening or closing tag. If they include white space in the contents of a tag element that they are submitting as a change to the candidate configuration, the NETCONF server preserves the white space in the configuration database.

In its responses, the NETCONF server includes white space between tag elements to enhance the readability of responses that are saved to a file: it uses newline characters to put each tag element on its own line, and spaces to indent child tag elements to the right compared to their parents. A client application can ignore or discard the white space, particularly if it does not store responses for later review by human users. However, it must not depend on the presence or absence of white space in any particular location when parsing the tag stream.

For more information about white space in XML documents, see the XML specification from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0, at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml.

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