I need to pass XML data through a filter that will transform the character data but leave the tags as-is. (The transform involves converting certain ASCII characters to utf8 Arabic characters, so I have to make sure this doesn't apply to the tags).

XML::Parser, with the "Style" set to "Stream" makes this very easy and clear, but there's one problem: if the input contains empty tags like this: 

  <sometag attr1="v1" attr2="v2"/>

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it'll come out looking like this: 
  <sometag attr1="v1" attr2="v2"></sometag>

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Am I just being too picky? Is it too much to ask that empty tags be kept empty? Here's a brief snippet that demonstrates the behavior: 
use XML::Parser;

$xml = qq{<tag attr="xyz"/>};

print "original: $xml\n";

$parser = new XML::Parser( Style => 'Stream' );

print "parsed: ";
$parser->parse( $xml );
print "\n";

sub StartTag { print }

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In reply to XML::Parser can't create empty tags? by graff

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