Why are you so defensive when I reply to your reply? I point out things that you didn't point out and that your response actually points against and you feel the need to reply with "Duh! I knew that" and to call me defensive.

But you also didn't comment on the main point of my reply: that you seem to have missed the main point of my original posting. Doing pre-/post-processing is mostly counter to the whole point of what I was providing a demonstration of. Restricting yourself to solutions that don't touch the code is perfectly opposed to the purpose of code that was offered up as "here is code you can easily change". It isn't just "one way to fix it", it is closer to a misuse of the example.

So? All I did was identify the features others might have to add to suit their needs.

Yes, and that in itself is actually going against the point of what I wrote. I wasn't providing a subroutine for people to just use. I was providing an example of code that somebody could similarly create to meet their own needs or that somebody might choose to customize to meet their needs.

If the prospective consumer of this example code is unable to determine on their own what the code handles, then they should not be trying to use the code.

You replied exactly like one would reply to "Here is a black box that claims to parse XML but only partially". Treating it like a black box is counter to the whole purpose and hints that I failed at conveying the point to you and thus likely to others and so some clarifications were in order.

Pointing out how the code can be easily modified was not being defensive; it was trying to get back to / reinforce the original point.