MIT LICENSED

Ever get a System.Xml.XmlException that says:

“Hexadecimal value 0x[whatever] is an invalid character”

…when trying to load a XML document using one of the .NET XML API objects like XmlReader, XmlDocument, or XDocument? Was “0x[whatever]” by chance one of these characters?

0x00 0x01 0x02 0x03 0x04 0x05 0x06 0x07 0x08

0x0B 0x0C 0x0E 0x0F

0x10 0x11 0x12 0x13 0x14 0x15

0x1A 0x1B 0x1C 0x1D 0x1E 0x1F 0x16 0x17 0x18 0x19

0x7F

The problem that causes these XmlExceptions is that the data being read or loaded contains characters that are illegal according to the XML specifications. Almost always, these characters are in the ASCII control character range (think whacky characters like null, bell, backspace, etc). These aren’t characters that have any business being in XML data; they’re illegal characters that should be removed, usually having found their way into the data from file format conversions, like when someone tries…