Hello, midod, and thanks for your quick reply. While you are right (and I was wrong) with regards to Attribute Value Normalization (see the correct updated reference from XML 1.0 4th edition at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#AVNormalize), this behavior should not apply to element value. However, it does when using XML::Twig. I want to be able to read element values "as is" without applying any manipulation to these values, at least whitespace wise. So is there a way and if so what is the way of perserving whitespaces? Thanks.