What should this print in your opinion?

use XML::Simple;

my $parser = new XML::Simple(
    forcearray => [qw(AREA LOCALE)],
    suppressempty => '',
);

$data = $parser->XMLin(<<'*END*');
<root>
    <empty></empty>
    <whitespace> </whitespace>
    <full>ahoj</full>
    <with_spaces>  cau  </with_spaces>
</root>
*END*

use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper($data);
[download]

Considering that NormaliseSpace is by default 0 which means "whitespace is passed through unaltered (except of course for the normalisation of whitespace in attribute values which is mandated by the XML recommendation)" I think it should print

$VAR1 = {
          'whitespace' => ' ',
          'with_spaces' => '  cau  ',
          'empty' => '',
          'full' => 'ahoj'
        };

XML::Simple disagrees and its result is

$VAR1 = {
          'whitespace' => '',
          'with_spaces' => '  cau  ',
          'empty' => '',
          'full' => 'ahoj'
        };

As you can see the content of the whitespace tag was removed.

Now I can understand why you would not want to end up with

$VAR1 = {
          'whitespace' => ' ',
          'with_spaces' => '  cau  ',
          'content' => [
                         '
        ',
                         '
        ',
                         '
        ',
                         '
        ',
                         '
'
                       ],
          'empty' => '',
          'full' => 'ahoj'
        };

but returning the same for <tag></tag> and <tag> </tag> doesn't seem entirely correct. To me at least.

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