What is the Point of using XML CDATA?

I was reading up on XML files and came across this <![CDATA[]]>.

In what sort of situation would this be useful?

I understand it being used as;

All text in an XML document will be parsed by the parser.

But text inside a CDATA section will be ignored by the parser.

from here. However, It doesn't exactly go into any detail of when it may be useful and/or its relevance to xml files/etc.

This SO question asks what does it mean, but again, not too much detail from what i can see of what does it do nor when should i use it - which is why I am asking this question now.

(i'm not exactly a pro, nor an adept - ok, more of a complete idiot actually - even reading the docs didn't actually help, so any comprehensive answers would be great :P)

Solution

You can use it to avoid XML escaping special characters.

Imagine you have an element like

<data>...</data>

And want to place the following text in the data element :

 a < b

Like so:

<data>a < b</data>

That doesn't work, since XML recognizes the < as a potential start of a new tag.

You can escape the < character:

<data>a &lt; b</data>

Or you can tell the XML parser to not parse your data by placing it in a CDATA section:

<data><![CDATA[a < b]]></data>

(Then again, with CDATA, your text cannot contain ]]>)