Your question is not really clear to me (maybe it's because it's the weekend). Without the arguments you use to call the script, I don't see exactly waht it is you are trying to achieve here.

In case this is what you need (and after reading Jenda's ob. XML::Rules plug ;--) maybe have a look at the ignore method (or the ignore_elts option for new, which needs some more docs I reckon).

If that doesn't help, maybe, as previously suggested, a higher level description of what you are trying to do would help.