Specific types used by parsers

Specific types are used when a parser needs additional information that is associated with some or all the elements in a tree in order to generate the bit stream.

For the XML parser, the specific type information is used to mark special elements such as components, processing instructions, and CDATA sections. The methods getSpecificType and setSpecificType are used by user-defined nodes to query this information and to generate message trees that use these special types.

Developers of user-defined parsers can generate their own specific type values to control special handling characteristics in their parser code using the existing C user-defined parser interface. The getSpecificType and setSpecificType methods enable Java™ user-defined nodes to fully use this parser capability.