How do I correctly use square bracket with cdata

Question

This is how my code gets shown in my developer console (Chrome):

<script type="text/javascript">// <!&#091;CDATA&#091; function hidden(){ document.getElementById("test123").style.visibility = "hidden"; } document.getElementById("test123").addEventListener("click", hidden); var banner =document.querySelectorAll('.contactBanner1'); for(var i=0;i<banner.length;i++){ banner&#091;i&#093;.addEventListener('mouseover',hidden,false); } // &#093;&#093;></script>

This is the error I get now: Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token ILLEGAL

How do I correctly use the [?

Assuming you're entering them as <![CDATA[ & //]]>, it works fine for me upon inspection. You running th eoutput through a parser/encoder of some kind? — Brad Christie
– Brad Christie, Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 19:54
using an external js file would bypass these document-based encoding issues. — dandavis
– dandavis, Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 20:00
@BradChristie Sorry I don't really know what you mean, my wordpress site automatically adds the <![CDATA[ & //]]> and I don't know how to use it. So I ran into this error. — RiesvGeffen
– RiesvGeffen, Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 20:00
why would wordpress (invented 2003) add CDATA trash that hasn't been needed since 1998? — dandavis
– dandavis, Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 20:02
I'm creating the normal <script> tag and the next time I open it there automatically is the CDATA.. — RiesvGeffen
– RiesvGeffen, Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 20:03

Scott Marcus · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-10 20:24:01Z

Back when XML was all the rage, people spent a lot of time thinking about their XHTML and XML being parsed by a single XML parser. As such, the XHTML needed to pass XML validation.

But, a problem that can be encountered is when that XHTML includes JavaScript and that JavaScript contains, say, a < meant to mean less-than.

In HTML, XHTML and XML the < means beginning of a start or end tag.

To prevent this, it was recommended that scripts in XHTML have their content marked as Character Data, so that if/when the XML parser got to it, it would effectively ignore special symbols like < (among others).

So, scripts should have been written as:

 <script type="text/javascript"> //<![CDATA[ // Inside the CDATA < gets ignored //]]> </script>

Your code doesn't follow this, instead you are providing the Unicode characters for [ and ].

And, lastly, if you are not worried about your JavaScript being parsed as XML, you can just write the more modern version:

 <script> </script>

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