Note that this particular example will work with the program, because the regex is anchored at the start of the line. However, in general it is possible that a "fake" XML declaration will appear at the beginning of a line, so it is a good point. For example:

<![CDATA[
<?xml version="1.0"?> ]]>
[download]

Also, while playing with the little program I wrote, I used the cat command to concatenate a bunch of XML files I have, and discovered that some of them did not have an end-of-line at the end of the last line, so the result would be like this:

</ESP-Component><?xml version="1.0"?>
[download]

Where the start declaration of one file would end up on the same line as the closing declaration of the previous file. In this case, this simple mechanism for recognizing when a file starts would not work, obviously.

Of course, I agree that some other packing method would be much better. But people do weird things... :-)

--ZZamboni