Some IDF object names can break the HTML output file

[santoshphilip]

Problem

• The EnergyPlus objects can have legal names in the following format Special glass <thickness is 3mm>
• Energyplus itself has no problems with such names
• This name turns up in the HTML output file.
  • In the HTML file the part name<thickness is 3mm> looks like an HTML tag.
  • The browser tries to make sense of it and fix it so that something can be displayed
  • This results in a mangled name in the HTML file as viewed in the browser

Solution

• Before the name goes into the HTML file, it has to be modified in the following manner
  • Special glass <thickness is 3mm> should become Special glass <thickness is 3mm>
  • < becomes < in the browser and > becomes > in the browser

Details

Some additional details for this issue (if relevant):

• Platform (Operating system, version): all
• EnergyPlus version: current develop, circa v9.4.0-IOFreeze, ea7967b

Checklist

Add to this list or remove from it as applicable. This is a simple templated set of guidelines.

• Defect file added (list location of defect file here)
• Ticket added to Pivotal for defect (development team task)
• Pull request created (the pull request will have additional tasks related to reviewing changes that fix this defect): Fix #8542 - Escape HTML characters.  #8544

[jmarrec]

Thanks for the report @santoshphilip. I added the checklist to your original post.

[JasonGlazer]

The fix should also be included for the XML output file (OutputControl:Table:Style, XML) which I don't think is commonly used but would face the same issue with confused tags.

[jmarrec]

@JasonGlazer XML is fine already:

EnergyPlus/src/EnergyPlus/OutputReportTabular.cc

Line 14276 in ea7967b

bodyEsc(iCol, jRow) = ConvertToEscaped(body(iCol, jRow));

[JasonGlazer]

Good. To bad the author of ConvertToEscaped() didn't think of applying it to the HTML file :-)

[jmarrec]

I'm guessing it was you, but it's been there as far as this repo's git history can go (7+ years), so who knows when it was really added and what HTML looked like then :)