I highly discourage this but I was curious to try it and didn't see any way around this kind of wackiness in the XML::Smart docs, and it will "work" for what you want.

use strictures;
use XML::Smart;
use Aspect;

open my $fh, "<", "xml.xml" or die $!;

my $logString = do { local $/; <$fh> };

around {
    my $return = $_->original->($_->args);
    $_->return_value( $return == 4 ? 2 : $return );
} call "XML::Smart::_data_type";

my $test = XML::Smart->new($logString);

print $test->data;

[download]

Docs -> Aspect. The problem is that XML::Smart sees anything outside a very basic set of characters as binary; it's being overly formal but seems pretty correct really. So, the second you pass in any wide/utf-8 stuff, the binary switch flips. I poked around a little and didn't see a way to circumvent or configure around it.

My real advice since XML::Smart is not actively maintained would be switch to a different XML library. XML::Twig or XML::LibXML probably.

In reply to Re: XML::Smart - undesired decoding of special XML characters by Your Mother
in thread XML::Smart - undesired decoding of special XML characters by NeedForPerl

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