IIS Config file and ampersand

• 22 May 2021
• ampersand,
• apostrophe,
• escape-ampersand,
• escape-special-chars,
• greater-than,
• iis,
• less-than,
• quote

Today I stumbled upon an interesting issue with web.config. Config files are XML files and they are also processed like such. In order to store a special character, you need to escape it. If not config file is invalid and the application is unable to start up.

Examples of some escape sequences:

• Ampersand (&): '&'
• Greater than (>): '>'
• Less than (<): '<'
• Apostrophe ('): '''
• Quote ("): '"'

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