OK and would it hurt anything to preserve the whitespace in case of tags with no children? Of course you would not want to keep the whitespace for <foo> 

 <foo>
   <bar>x</bar>
   <baz>y</baz>
 </foo>

[download]
that would make a fairly big difference in the results but for <foo> </foo>? The only difference is that you get  ..., foo => ' ', ... instead of  ..., foo => '', ... which would actually make it consistent with the handling of <foo> whitespace preserved  </foo>. What I have IS basically a config file, but I need to preserve the whitespace, even if it's the only content of an option.

The whole change necessary in the module would be 

line 925
<<      next if($val =~ m{^\s*$}s);  # Skip all whitespace content
>>      next if (($self->{opt}->{suppressempty} or %$attr) and $val =~
+ m{^\s*$}s);  # Skip all whitespace content

line 956
>>    if (!$self->{opt}->{suppressempty} and scalar(keys %$attr) > 1 a
+nd $attr->{$self->{opt}->{contentkey}} =~ m{^\s*$}s) {
>>      delete $attr->{$self->{opt}->{contentkey}};
>>    }

[download]

Jenda
XML sucks. Badly. SOAP on the other hand is the most powerfull vacuum pump ever invented.

In reply to Re^2: XML::Simple bug? aka I want the whitespace dude! by Jenda
in thread XML::Simple bug? aka I want the whitespace dude! by Jenda

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.