FOR XML RAW & Null Characters Bug

Just curious if anyone else has seen this issue:
We had a situation where the XML being retrieved from an XML Explicit query
was malformed. After looking at the resulting XML from the query being ran
with different sets of paramaters we were able to identify that the building
of the XML was stopping on the same value. Looking further we noticed this
field had a null character (ASCII code of 0).
Here's a simple example showing the issue:
declare @.var varchar(100)
set @.var='Josh' + CHAR(0)
select @.var AS Col
for XML RAW
this results in <row Col="Josh
I couldn't find if this was a documented bug or expected behavior? Does
anyone know of any articles that describe how the null character is handled
in SQL?
Thanks
JoshOn Mon, 30 Jan 2006 13:05:31 -0800, joshb wrote:

>Just curious if anyone else has seen this issue:
>We had a situation where the XML being retrieved from an XML Explicit query
>was malformed. After looking at the resulting XML from the query being ran
>with different sets of paramaters we were able to identify that the buildin
g
>of the XML was stopping on the same value. Looking further we noticed this
>field had a null character (ASCII code of 0).
>Here's a simple example showing the issue:
>declare @.var varchar(100)
>set @.var='Josh' + CHAR(0)
>select @.var AS Col
>for XML RAW
>this results in <row Col="Josh
>I couldn't find if this was a documented bug or expected behavior? Does
>anyone know of any articles that describe how the null character is handled
>in SQL?
Hi Josh,
The problem is that ASCII 0 is used as a string delimiter in many
languages. So the low-level code that sends the results to the screen
sees the ASCII 0 and thinks it's the end of the string.
Try running your code from another client (e.g. osql).
Hugo Kornelis, SQL Server MVP|||Hi, Josh
The problem is fixed in SQL Server 2005, where your example returns
this (in Management Studio or in Query Analyzer):
<row Col="Josh�"/>
However, Management Studio warns that the character with the code 0x0
is illegal in XML documents.
Razvan