question: private String processSpecialCharacters ( String s ) { if ( s == null ) { return null ; } char [ ] charStr = s . toCharArray ( ) ; String specialStr = "" ; for ( int i = 0 ; i < charStr . length ; i ++ ) { if ( charStr [ i ] == '&' ) { specialStr = specialStr . concat ( "&amp;" ) ; } else if ( charStr [ i ] == '<' ) { specialStr = specialStr . concat ( "&lt;" ) ; } else if ( charStr [ i ] == '>' ) { specialStr = specialStr . concat ( "&gt;" ) ; } else if ( charStr [ i ] == '\'' ) { specialStr = specialStr . concat ( "&apos;" ) ; } else if ( charStr [ i ] == '\"' ) { specialStr = specialStr . concat ( "&quot;" ) ; } else { specialStr = specialStr . concat ( String . valueOf ( charStr [ i ] ) ) ; } } s = specialStr ; return s ; }
target:  This function has been added for the processing of special characters lik <,>,'," and & in the data to be serialized. These have to be taken of specifically or else there will be parsing error while trying to read the contents of the XML file.