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xmllint(1)

xmllint - command line XML tool

XMLLINT(1) xmllint Manual XMLLINT(1)

xmllint - command line XML tool


.HP 192u


xmllint
[
| --version
| --debug
| --quiet
| --shell
| --xpath "XPath_expression"
| --xpath0 "XPath_expression"
| --copy
| --recover
| --huge
| --nocompact
| --nodefdtd
| --nodict
| --noenc
| --noent
| --nofixup-base-uris
| --noout
| --nonet
| --path "PATH(S)"
| --load-trace
| --valid
| --postvalid
| --dtdvalid URL
| --dtdvalidfpi FPI
| --timing
| --output FILE
| --repeat
| --insert
| --strict-namespace
| --compress
| --html
| --xmlout
| --push
| --memory
| --max-ampl INTEGER
| --maxmem NBBYTES
| --nowarning
| --noblanks
| --nocdata
| --format
| --pretty INTEGER
| --encode ENCODING
| --dropdtd
| --nsclean
| --catalogs
| --nocatalogs
| --auto
| --xinclude
| --noxincludenode
| --loaddtd
| --dtdattr
| --stream
| --walker
| --pattern PATTERNVALUE
| --relaxng SCHEMA
| --schema SCHEMA
| --schematron SCHEMA
| --c14n
| --c14n11
| --exc-c14n
| --pedantic
| --sax
| --sax1
| --oldxml10
]
{
| XML-FILE(S)...
| -
}


.PP The xmllint program parses one or more XML files, specified on the command line as XML-FILE (or the standard input if the filename provided is - ). It prints various types of output, depending upon the options selected. It is useful for detecting errors both in XML code and in the XML parser itself.


.PP xmllint is part of the libxml2 library.


.PP Options enabling validation.


.PP --dtdvalid URL


Use the DTD specified by an URL for validation.


.RE


.PP --dtdvalidfpi FPI


Use the DTD specified by a Formal Public Identifier FPI for validation, note that this will require a catalog exporting that Formal Public Identifier to work.


.RE


.PP --relaxng SCHEMA


Use RelaxNG file named SCHEMA for validation.


.RE


.PP --schema SCHEMA


Use a W3C XML Schema file named SCHEMA for validation.


.RE


.PP --schematron SCHEMA


Use a Schematron file named SCHEMA for validation.


.RE


.PP --valid


Determine if the document is a valid instance of the included Document Type Definition (DTD). A DTD to be validated against also can be specified at the command line using the --dtdvalid option. By default, xmllint also checks to determine if the document is well-formed.


.RE


.PP --strict-namespace


Return an error if the document is well-formed, but has namespace errors. This enforces namespace-well-formedness.


.RE


.PP The following options set the respective parser options.


.PP --dtdattr


Fetch external DTD and populate the tree with inherited attributes. Implies --loaddtd.


.RE


.PP --huge


Ignore some hardcoded parser limits.


.RE


.PP --loaddtd


Fetch an external DTD and external parameter entities.


.RE


.PP --max-ampl INTEGER


Set the maximum amplification factor which protects against exponential entity expansion ("billion laughs"). The default value is 5. Documents making heavy use of entity expansion may require a higher value.


.RE


.PP --noblanks


Drop "ignorable" blank spaces. This option is unreliable and shouldn't be used.


.RE


.PP --nocatalogs


Do not use any catalogs.


.RE


.PP --nocdata


Substitute CDATA section by equivalent text nodes.


.RE


.PP --nodefdtd


Do not set default HTML doctype (parser option HTML_PARSE_NODEFDTD).


.RE


.PP --noenc


Ignore encoding declaration (parser option XML_PARSE_IGNORE_ENC).


.RE


.PP --noent


Substitute entity values for entity references. By default, xmllint leaves entity references in place. This enables loading of external DTDs and entities.


.RE


.PP --nofixup-base-uris


Don't fix xml:base URIs when processing XIncludes (parser option XML_PARSE_NOBASEFIX).


.RE


.PP --nonet


Do not use the Internet to fetch DTDs or entities. Has no effect with libxml2 2.15 or later.


.RE


.PP --nowarning


Do not emit warnings from the parser and/or validator.


.RE


.PP --nsclean


Remove redundant namespace declarations.


.RE


.PP --oldxml10


Use deprecated parsing rules before XML 1.0, 5th edition.


.RE


.PP --pedantic


Enable additional warnings.


.RE


.PP --recover


Output any parsable portions of an invalid document. Exact behavior is unspecified. Use of this option is discouraged.


.RE


.PP --xinclude


Do XInclude processing.


.RE


.PP Options that don't fall in another category.


.PP --catalogs


Use the SGML catalog(s) from SGML_CATALOG_FILES. XML catalogs are loaded by default.


.RE


.PP --dropdtd


Remove DTD after parsing.


.RE


.PP --html


Use the HTML parser.


.RE


.PP --path "PATH(S)"


Use the (space- or colon-separated) list of filesystem paths specified by PATHS to load DTDs or entities. Enclose space-separated lists by quotation marks.


.RE


.PP --quiet


Don't print informational messages to stderr.


.RE


.PP --sax


Print SAX callbacks for debugging. Can be used for streaming DTD and Schema validation when used with --noout.


.RE


.PP --shell


Run a navigating shell. Details on available commands in shell mode are below (see the section called “SHELL COMMANDS”).


.RE


.PP --stream


Use streaming API - useful when used in combination with --relaxng or --valid options for validation of files that are too large to be held in memory.


.RE


.PP --version


Display the version of libxml2 used.


.RE


.PP Options controlling output. Except for --noout these have no effect in SAX or stream mode.


.PP --compress


Turn on gzip(1) compression of output.


.RE


.PP --c14n, --c14n11, --exc-c14n


Use the W3C XML Canonicalisation (C14N) to serialize the result of parsing to stdout. It keeps comments in the result.


.RE


.PP --encode ENCODING


Output in the given encoding. Note that this works for full document not fragments or result from XPath queries.


.RE


.PP --format


Reformat and reindent the output. The XMLLINT_INDENT environment variable controls the indentation. The default value is two spaces " ").


Especially in the absence of a DTD, this feature has never worked reliably and is fundamentally broken.


.RE


.PP --noout


Suppress output. By default, xmllint outputs the result tree.


.RE


.PP --output FILE


Define a file path where xmllint will save the result of parsing. Usually the programs build a tree and save it on stdout, with this option the result XML instance will be saved onto a file.


.RE


.PP --pretty INTEGER


Value 0 means no formatting, 1 means XML_SAVE_FORMAT (same as --format), 2 means XML_SAVE_WSNONSIG.


.RE


.PP --xmlout


Used in conjunction with --html. Usually when HTML is parsed the document is saved with the HTML serializer. But with this option the resulting document is saved with the XML serializer. This is primarily used to generate XHTML from HTML input.


.RE


.PP The following options can be used to debug the libxml2 library. Behavior of these options may change without notice.


.PP --auto


Generate a small document for testing purposes.


.RE


.PP --copy


Test the internal copy implementation.


.RE


.PP --debug


Parse a file and output an annotated tree of the in-memory version of the document.


.RE


.PP --insert


Test for valid insertions. DEPRECATED: This feature will be removed.


.RE


.PP --load-trace


Display all the documents loaded during the processing to stderr.


.RE


.PP --maxmem NNBYTES


Test the parser memory support. NNBYTES is the maximum number of bytes the library is allowed to allocate. This can also be used to make sure batch processing of XML files will not exhaust the virtual memory of the server running them.


.RE


.PP --memory


Parse from memory.


.RE


.PP --nocompact


Do not generate compact text nodes (parser option XML_PARSE_COMPACT). Only for debugging.


.RE


.PP --nodict


Don't use dictionaries (parser option XML_PARSE_NODICT). Only for debugging.


.RE


.PP --noxincludenode


Do XInclude processing but do not generate XInclude start and end nodes.


.RE


.PP --pattern PATTERNVALUE


Used to exercise the pattern recognition engine, which can be used with the reader interface to the parser. It allows to select some nodes in the document based on an XPath (subset) expression. Used for debugging.


.RE


.PP --postvalid


Validate after parsing has completed.


.RE


.PP --push


Use the push mode of the parser.


.RE


.PP --repeat


Repeat 100 times, for timing or profiling.


.RE


.PP --sax1


Use deprecated SAX1 interface (only for debugging).


.RE


.PP --timing


Output information about the time it takes xmllint to perform the various steps.


.RE


.PP --walker


Test the walker module, which is a reader interface but for a document tree, instead of using the reader API on an unparsed document it works on an existing in-memory tree. Used for debugging.


.RE


.PP --xpath "XPath_expression"


Run an XPath expression given as argument and print the result. In case of a nodeset result, each node in the node set is serialized in full in the output. In case of an empty node set the "XPath set is empty" result will be shown and exit code 11 will be returned..


.RE


.PP xmllint offers an interactive shell mode invoked with the --shell command. Available commands in shell mode include (in alphabetical order):


.PP base


Display XML base of the node.


.RE


.PP bye


Leave the shell.


.RE


.PP cat NODE


Display the given node or the current one.


.RE


.PP cd PATH


Change the current node to the given path (if unique) or root if no argument is given.


.RE


.PP dir PATH


Dumps information about the node (namespace, attributes, content).


.RE


.PP du PATH


Show the structure of the subtree under the given path or the current node.


.RE


.PP exit


Leave the shell.


.RE


.PP help


Show this help.


.RE


.PP load FILENAME


Load a new document with the given filename.


.RE


.PP ls PATH


List contents of the given path or the current directory.


.RE


.PP pwd


Display the path to the current node.


.RE


.PP quit


Leave the shell.


.RE


.PP save FILENAME


Save the current document to the given filename or to the original name.


.RE


.PP validate


Check the document for errors.


.RE


.PP write FILENAME


Write the current node to the given filename.


.RE


.PP SGML_CATALOG_FILES


SGML catalog behavior can be changed by redirecting queries to the user's own set of catalogs. This can be done by setting the SGML_CATALOG_FILES environment variable to a list of catalogs. An empty one should deactivate loading the default catalog.


.RE


.PP XML_CATALOG_FILES


XML catalog behavior can be changed by redirecting queries to the user's own set of catalogs. This can be done by setting the XML_CATALOG_FILES environment variable to a space-separated list of catalogs. Use percent-encoding to escape spaces or other characters. An empty variable should deactivate loading the default catalog.


.RE


.PP XML_DEBUG_CATALOG


Setting the environment variable XML_DEBUG_CATALOG to non-zero using the export command outputs debugging information related to catalog operations.


.RE


.PP XMLLINT_INDENT


Setting the environment variable XMLLINT_INDENT controls the indentation. The default value is two spaces " ".


.RE


.PP xmllint return codes provide information that can be used when calling it from scripts.


.PP 0


No error


.RE


.PP 1


Unclassified


.RE


.PP 2


Error in DTD


.RE


.PP 3


Validation error


.RE


.PP 4


Document isn't well-formed or couldn't be read


.RE


.PP 5


Error in schema compilation


.RE


.PP 6


Error writing output


.RE


.PP 7


Error in pattern (generated when --pattern option is used)


.RE


.PP 9


Out of memory error


.RE


.PP 10


XPath evaluation error


.RE


.PP 11


XPath result is empty


.RE


.PP More information can be found in the libxml2 repo at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxml2

John Fleck <jfleck@inkstain.net>

Ziying Sherwin <sherwin@nlm.nih.gov>

Heiko Rupp <hwr@pilhuhn.de>

Copyright © 2001, 2004

11/02/2026 xmllint

libxml2 2.15.4-r2 · os · ingested 2026-11-03