Valid Node Names

When a Flat File Schema is created, an internal XML Schema-based representation of the metadata is also generated, so the node names you specify for the records, fields, and groups must be valid XML names. Follow the naming restrictions listed in the following tables when creating node nodes in Flat File Schema.

Attention: You might be able to enter invalid characters into the Name field but the generated Flat File Schema might be incorrect. You cannot create a variable from an invalid schema.

XML naming restrictions are listed in the following tables.

Valid Name Types Description
Starting Name Characters
  • Letters: both uppercase and lower case
  • Punctuation: underscore (_)
Non-starting Name Characters
  • Letters: both uppercase and lowercase
  • Punctuation: underscore, period, and hyphen
  • Numbers: 0-9
Invalid Characters Description
    space
: colon
~ tilde
/ forward slash
\ backslash
; semicolon
? question mark
$ dollar sign
& ampersand
% percent sign
@ at sign
^ hat sign
= equals sign
* asterisk
+ plus sign
 ( ) any parentheses
| pipe
' " ` any quotation marks
{   } [ ] > < any brackets



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Timestamp icon Last updated: Tuesday, 27 September 2016


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