many thanks for your detailed feedback which I will consume bit by bit :)

In a short test with slight adaptations to your script: 

  1. my $doc = XML::LibXML->load_xml(string => <<'XML');
<foo>hello, foobar <bar x="foo">world! a.!!!emsp14;A.</bar> fo<quz/>oo
+a.!!!hairsp;A.</foo>
XML

    [download]
  2. my $re = qr/a\.(!!!emsp14;|!!!hairsp;)A\./;
  3. my $e = $doc->createElement('abbrev');

I got the following output:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<foo>hello, foobar <bar x="foo">world! <abbrev>a.!!!emsp14;A.</abbrev>
+!!!emsp14;</bar> fo<quz/>oo<abbrev>a.!!!hairsp;A.</abbrev>!!!hairsp;<
+/foo>

[download]

As you will see, the separating whitespace is repeated after the "abbrev" element. Why do I use "!!!emsp14;" for the entity &emsp14;? I want to prevent that such entities will be resolved by an XML parser and I want to manipulate my data independently from a DTD.

In reply to Re^2: wrap abbreviations in XML element by LexPl
in thread wrap abbreviations in XML element by LexPl

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