Element
1. <data, programming> One of the items of data in an
array.
2. <language, text> One kind of node in an
SGML,
HTML, or
XML document tree.
An SGML element is typically represented by a start
tag ("<p>") and an end tag ("</p>"). In some SGML implementations, some tags are omissible, as with "</p>" in
HTML.
The start tag can contain attributes ("<p lang="en-UK" class='stuff'>"), which are an unordered set of key-value bindings for that element.
Both the start tag and end tag for an element typically contain the "tag name" (also called the "
GI" or generic identifier) for that element.
In
XML, an element is always represented either by an explicit start tag and end tag, or by an empty element tag ("<img src='thing.
png' alt='a dodad' />").
Other kinds of SGML node are: a section of character data ("foo"), a comment ("<!-- bar -->"), a markup declaration ("<!ENTITY reg CDATA '®'>"), or a processing instruction ("<?xml-stylesheet href="shop-english.xsl" type="text/xsl" ?>").
