The content of XML-EVENT

When an event occurs during XML parsing, the XML parser writes the appropriate event name, shown below, to the XML-EVENT special register. (The event is passed to your processing procedure, and the text that corresponds to the event is written to either the XML-TEXT or XML-NTEXT special register.)

ATTRIBUTE-CHARACTER
Occurs in attribute values for the predefined entity references '&', ''', '>', '<', and '"'. See XML specification for details about predefined entities.
ATTRIBUTE-CHARACTERS
Occurs for each fragment of an attribute value. XML text contains the fragment. An attribute value normally consists of only a single string, even if it is split across lines. The attribute value might consist of multiple events, however.
ATTRIBUTE-NAME
Occurs for each attribute in an element start tag or empty element tag, after a valid name is recognized. XML text contains the attribute name.
ATTRIBUTE-NATIONAL-CHARACTER
Occurs in attribute values for numeric character references (Unicode code points or "scalar values") of the form '&#dd..;' or '&#hh..;', where d and h represent decimal and hexadecimal digits, respectively. If the scalar value of the national character is greater than 65,535 (NX'FFFF'), XML-NTEXT contains two encoding units (a surrogate pair) and has a length of 4 bytes. This pair of encoding units represents a single character. Do not create characters that are not valid by splitting this pair. (See the related reference below about code-page-sensitive characters for information about coding the number sign (#).)
COMMENT
Occurs for any comments in the XML document. XML text contains the data between the opening and closing comment delimiters, '<!--' and '-->', respectively. (See the related reference below about code-page-sensitive characters for information about coding the exclamation point (!).)
CONTENT-CHARACTER
Occurs in element content for the predefined entity references '&amp;', '&apos;', '&gt;', '&lt;', and '&quot;'. See XML specification for details about predefined entities.
CONTENT-CHARACTERS
This event represents the principal part of an XML document: the character data between element start and end tags. XML text contains this data, which usually consists of only a single string even if it is split across lines. If the content of an element includes any references or other elements, the complete content might consist of several events. The parser also uses the CONTENT-CHARACTERS event to pass the text of CDATA sections to your program.
CONTENT-NATIONAL-CHARACTER
Occurs in element content for numeric character references (Unicode code points or "scalar values") of the form '&#dd..;' or '&#hh..;', where d and h represent decimal and hexadecimal digits, respectively. If the scalar value of the national character is greater than 65,535 (NX'FFFF'), XML-NTEXT contains two encoding units (a surrogate pair) and has a length of 4 bytes. This pair of encoding units represents a single character. Do not create characters that are not valid by splitting this pair. (See the related reference below about code-page-sensitive characters for information about coding the number sign (#).)
DOCUMENT-TYPE-DECLARATION
Occurs when the parser finds a document type declaration. Document type declarations begin with the character sequence '<!DOCTYPE' and end with a right angle bracket ('>') character; some fairly complicated grammar rules describe the content in between. See XML specification for details. (Also see the related reference below about code-page-sensitive characters for information about coding the exclamation point (!).) For this event, XML text contains the entire declaration, including the opening and closing character sequences. This is the only event for which XML text includes the delimiters.
ENCODING-DECLARATION
Occurs within the XML declaration for the optional encoding declaration. XML text contains the encoding value.
END-OF-CDATA-SECTION
Occurs when the parser recognizes the end of a CDATA section. (See the related reference below about code-page-sensitive characters for information about coding the right square bracket (]).)
END-OF-DOCUMENT
Occurs when document parsing has completed.
END-OF-ELEMENT
Occurs once for each element end tag or empty element tag when the parser recognizes the closing angle bracket of the tag. XML text contains the element name.
EXCEPTION
Occurs when an error in processing the XML document is detected. For encoding conflict exceptions, which are signaled before parsing begins, XML-TEXT (for XML documents in an alphanumeric data item) or XML-NTEXT (for XML documents in a national data item) either is of length zero or contains only the encoding declaration value from the document.
PROCESSING-INSTRUCTION-DATA
Occurs for the data that follows the PI target, up to but not including the PI closing character sequence, '?>'. XML text contains the PI data, which includes trailing, but not leading, white-space characters.
PROCESSING-INSTRUCTION-TARGET
Occurs when the parser recognizes the name that follows the opening character sequence, '<?', of a processing instruction (PI). PIs allow XML documents to contain special instructions for applications.
STANDALONE-DECLARATION
Occurs within the XML declaration for the optional standalone declaration. XML text contains the standalone value.
START-OF-CDATA-SECTION
Occurs at the start of a CDATA section. CDATA sections begin with the string '<![CDATA[' and end with the string ']]>'. Such sections are used to "escape" blocks of text that contain characters that would otherwise be recognized as XML markup. XML text always contains the opening character sequence '<![CDATA['. The parser passes the content of a CDATA section between these delimiters as a single CONTENT-CHARACTERS event. (See the related reference below about code-page-sensitive characters for information about coding the exclamation point (!) and left square bracket ([).)
START-OF-DOCUMENT
Occurs once, at the beginning of the parsing of the document. XML text is the entire document, including any line-control characters such as LF (Line Feed) or NL (New Line).
START-OF-ELEMENT
Occurs once for each element start tag or empty element tag. XML text is set to the element name.
UNKNOWN-REFERENCE-IN-ATTRIBUTE
Occurs within attribute values for entity references other than the five predefined entity references, as shown for ATTRIBUTE-CHARACTER above.
UNKNOWN-REFERENCE-IN-CONTENT
Occurs within element content for entity references other than the predefined entity references, as shown for CONTENT-CHARACTER above.
VERSION-INFORMATION
Occurs within the optional XML declaration for the version information. XML text contains the version value. An XML declaration is XML text that specifies the version of XML that is used and the encoding of the document.

Example: processing XML events

related references   
Code-page-sensitive characters in XML markup
  
XML-EVENT (Enterprise COBOL Language Reference)  
XML specification (Predefined entities)