... and it takes care of escaping reserved chars.

But, pleeease, try XML::Writer instead of XML::Simple.

XML::Simple is so "simple" that in the last month I answered to no less than 4 posts about it, and the issue was always about the incorrect use of the not-so-simple-and-not-at-all-obvious options of that module.

Really, I'ld have nothing against XML::Simple if only it had a different name :) Something in the line of XML::Config wold be nice, for it is (explicitly) optimized for managing XML config files, not generic XML.