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Using FOR XML PATH with Reserved XML Characters

Erik Darling shows how we can use FOR XML PATH on data which includes reserved XML characters:

The purpose of these queries is to show you hot to remove XML elements, and handle XML control characters like &, <, >, etc. All of these results return a single row, just to keep the examples simple.

Read on to learn more. One thing I’ve done in the past, when I know that there are specific reserved characters in use, is to run REPLACE() over the resultant data, changing &lt; to < and so forth. But Erik shows us how to do it the best way.