I am thinking that this is not the best approach. The XML packages tend to be more for taking structured data and putting it in an XML document (ie databases or values of variables/hashes/arrays) To work with unstructured data, regular expressions seem like the best bet. After loading the text into a variable you do some subsitutes, numbers are easy 
$text =~ s/^(|.*\s)(\d+)(\s.*|)$/$1<number>$2<\/number>$3/
# The expression looks like the following
# beginning of line followed by either nothing or at least
#  one space which neighbors a set of digits followed by #  
# either nothing or at least a space and the end of the line

[download]
Deates would be done in a similar approach replacing \d+ with whatever a date looks like. I think there are some loose date modules you might can still some RE's from.
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I always wanted to be somebody... I guess I should have been more specific.

In reply to Re: Building an XML File from text by atlantageek
in thread Building an XML File from text by pike

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