How did ">" get into my file?

[Gregg Bell]

I was checking a Sigil-made epub for something else and was suprised to see

>

on my title page. Here is how it looked in the code view:

<p class="center supermargintop">25820&gt;</p>

How did it get there? (I didn't put it there.)

Is there anything I can do to keep it from happening again?

Thanks.

[theducks]

You had a stray/extra >
Cleanup changes that to an entity since it is treated as text

More care or just have a saved search for the entity (use care if your text uses that symbol intentionally)

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by theducks

You had a stray/extra >

It's happened to me now and then. Fortunately they're easy to find and remove with search and replace when they're an entity. I have no idea how you'd find them before they're turned into an entity.

[Turtle91]

Yup - I've had it when I was highlighting a section and just missed the closing bracket. It happens.

[Elektron]

> is HTML for >. Just replace it with > and you should be good to go

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by theducks

You had a stray/extra >
Cleanup changes that to an entity since it is treated as text

More care or just have a saved search for the entity (use care if your text uses that symbol intentionally)

Thanks ducks. That makes sense. And I don't use that symbol so this is a one and done thing. More care? Impossible.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by hobnail

It's happened to me now and then. Fortunately they're easy to find and remove with search and replace when they're an entity. I have no idea how you'd find them before they're turned into an entity.

Thanks hobnail

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Yup - I've had it when I was highlighting a section and just missed the closing bracket. It happens.

Thanks Dion

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Elektron

> is HTML for >. Just replace it with > and you should be good to go

Thanks Elektron

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Elektron

> is HTML for >. Just replace it with > and you should be good to go

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Thanks Elektron

Actually, no. This is not the best approach. The extra angle bracket was changed to an entity precisely because its inclusion made the xhtml invalid. Changing it back to invalid xhtml will only cause it to be turned back to an entity again. Angle brackets cannot be used in xhtml text when they're not a part of valid (x)html markup

The correct approach is find out if there NEEDS to be an angle-bracket displayed at that particular point. If so, then it needs to stay as the greater-than entity. If there doesn't need to be an angle-bracket displayed there, you need to find out what went wrong with the xhtml in the first place. More than likely, the entity can simply be removed. But make no mistake: changing it back to '>' is not the solution to your problem. That will most likely only result in a Pink Preview Error page and a reversion right back to > if you save/open the epub in that error state.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

The correct approach is find out if there NEEDS to be an angle-bracket displayed at that particular point. If so, then it needs to stay as the greater-than entity.

Exactly.

Most likely, what happened is Gregg accidentally had a stray '>' while copying/pasting + searching/replacing. This usually happens when you accidentally do:

<p>This is a test.</p>

Search: test.
Replace: test.>

<p>This is a test.></p>

The stray '>' gets changed into > because Sigil says "Hey, this is invalid XHTML, let me fix that for you". So Sigil fixes your invalid code to this:

<p>This is a test.&gt;</p>

But in some cases, the > might actually be a REAL "greater than symbol". For example, in an equation "x > y+1", the HTML would be:

x > y+1

In that case, the > is correct, because you actually WANT the book to display the "greater than symbol".