Note that I didn't use <c:out> to emit 'x'. Since we know exactly what is going to be emitted (numerals) there's no need to use <c:out> to HTML-encode the output.
You
should use <c:out> whenever you do not know whether the text to be emitted needs to be HTML-encoded or not.
(This assumes
Tomcat 5 and
JSP 2.0, of course).
[ January 20, 2006: Message edited by: Bear Bibeault ]