Logically, an XML document is divided into elements.
Physically, an XML document is divided into entities
Entity references:
Parsed internal general entity references like &
Parsed external general entity references
Unparsed external general entity references
External parameter entity references
Internal parameter entity references
Reading an XML document is not the same thing as reading an XML file
The file contains entity references.
The document contains the entities' replacement text.
When you use a parser to read a document you'll get the text including characters like <. You will not see the entity references.