& or & what should be used for & (ampersand) if we are using utf8 in xhtml document?

html xhtml html-entities
Jitendra Vyas picture Jitendra Vyas · Jan 26, 2010 · Viewed 48.8k times · Source

What is the difference between this & and this & for &(ampersand)? What should be use with utf8 ?

Answer

Gumbo picture Gumbo · Jan 26, 2010

Both are character references and refer to the same character (AMPERSAND, U+0026). & is a named or entity character reference and & is a numerical character reference.

In fact, & is actually just a substitution for & (see list of character entities):

<!ENTITY amp     CDATA "&#38;"   -- ampersand, U+0026 ISOnum -->

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