Forward slash inside div - validator says "end tag for element X which is not open"

[Kadence]

I have a table which was showing up messed up in Firefox, so I checked the HTML in the validator. I found an odd error which can be boiled down to:

<img src="path" />
<div class="name">Test/Text</div>

The forward slash inside "Test/Text" creates an "end tag for element X which is not open" error message.

I'm using htmlspecialchars() and that doesn't escape forward slashes - I was unaware they could cause issues. Is this error something I should be concerned with?

[felgall]

A forward slash there is completely valid and so isn't what the validator is complaining about. Can you post a link to the page so that we can see a bit more of the actual HTML.

[zcorpan]

It seems to be either weird but correct SGML behavior or a bug in the validator.

The slash in the img tag is a weird SGML "feature", where

<span/hello world/

is equivalent to

<span>hello world</span>

However, the img tag doesn't have an end tag, so "<img/>" is just equivalent to

<img>>

But it seems the validator is still looking for a slash and interprets the slash in "Test/Text" as the end tag for the div.

Possible solutions: remove the slash in the img tag; or change the doctype to an XHTML doctype or the HTML5 doctype. Or ignore it and use another validator without the silly SGML feature, like http://validator.nu/

[seoindiauk]

I have a table which was showing up messed up in Firefox, so I checked the HTML in the validator. I found an odd error which can be boiled down to:

<img src="path" />
<div class="name">Test/Text</div>

The forward slash inside "Test/Text" creates an "end tag for element X which is not open" error message.

I'm using htmlspecialchars() and that doesn't escape forward slashes - I was unaware they could cause issues. Is this error something I should be concerned with?

We know its ok, but HTML in the W3c validator will show error for that. Solution remove / i.e. do <img src="path"> instead of <img src="path" /> problem will be solved.

[zcorpan]

It seems to be either weird but correct SGML behavior or a bug in the validator.

The slash in the img tag is a weird SGML "feature", where

<span/hello world/

is equivalent to

<span>hello world</span>

However, the img tag doesn't have an end tag, so "<img/>" is just equivalent to

<img>>

But it seems the validator is still looking for a slash and interprets the slash in "Test/Text" as the end tag for the div.

Hmm, scrap the above, my testing was wrong. If the validator parses with a DTD it shouldn't give an error.

[felgall]

The slash in the img tag is invalid for HTML and shouldn't be there - it is required for XHTML though.

[Kadence]

The slash in the img tag is invalid for HTML and shouldn't be there - it is required for XHTML though.

Yes you're right - like zcorpan said it doesn't give the error the DTD passed and set as XHTML.