hi,

this is more an html parsing question than an XML question but I think it's 
the kind of thing that folks in an XML newsgroup would be more likely to 
help with, so please excuse me if it's a little off topic. please be aware 
that I am primarily talking about HTML rather than XHTML but I would also 
like to understand how XHTML works for when I prepare to convert the app to 
XHTML.

I have recently discovered that this:

<script>var x='</script>';</script>

is not valid HTML - the fact that there is an end script tag in quotes 
causes the parser to stop recognising the script. initially my reaction was 
that this is not a surprise because I had failed to HTML encode the script 
contents, so my second attempt was this:

<script>var x='&lt;/script&gt;';</script>

however this it DOES NOT WORK - the variable ends up containing the text 
"&lt;/script&gt;"

can someone point me at part of the w3c specification that states how script 
tags are parsed differently to other tags in HTML.

interestingly i have also discovered that this:

<script>if (3<5);</script>

IS valid html and seems even to be valid XHTML even though it is not valid 
XML

Andy