Not quite. If the DTD tells you, for example, that element a may contain elements b, c, or d, and that b can contain e and f, then if it looks like element a contains one b, and two e's, you can be pretty sure that the b was close improperly (if at all), and the e's should be in b.

There are still many possibilities for confusion. But a heuristic that started with the DTD could do quite a good job. I'm not going to pretend it would be easy and/or fun ... but in theory the information may be there that could do a good job - and, if the DTD does not allow overlaps (such as a and b both allowing d's, so that the d can either be a child or a grandchild of a), you may even be able to do a perfect job.

In reply to Re^4: Repair malformed XML by Tanktalus
in thread Repair malformed XML by spoulson

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