that works for & but it won't work for <,>,'," 
regex are:

$text =~ s/&(?!amp|quot|apos|lt|gt)/!38/g;
$text =~ s/"(?!amp|quot|apos|lt|gt)/!34/g;
$text =~ s/<(?!amp|quot|apos|lt|gt)/!40/g;
$text =~ s/>(?!amp|quot|apos|lt|gt)/!41/g;
$text =~ s/'(?!amp|quot|apos|lt|gt)/!39/g;

[download]
when i run that on my xml i get: 
!40?xml version=!341.0!34 encoding=!34UTF-8!34?!41
!40TRANSACTION!41
    !40FIELDS!41
        !40FIELD KEY=!34user!34!41name!40/FIELD!41
        !40FIELD KEY=!34password!34!41pass!38word!40/FIELD!41
        !40FIELD KEY=!34operation_type!34!41!40do_what!41!40/FIELD!41
     !40/FIELDS!41
!40/TRANSACTION!41

[download]
so i am still in the same spot i need to be able to only manipulate the data in between > <

thanks again for your help

In reply to Re: Re: Re: parsing reserved chars with xml::simple by bear0053
in thread parsing reserved chars with xml::simple by bear0053

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