Count the node with whitespace
using System; using System.Linq; using System.Xml.Linq; using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Generic; public class MainClass{ public static void Main(){ XElement xmlTree1 = XElement.Parse("<Root> <Child> </Child> </Root>", LoadOptions.PreserveWhitespace); xmlTree1.Save("Tree.xml"); Console.WriteLine(xmlTree1); int whiteSpaceNodes; XElement xmlTree3 = XElement.Load("Tree.xml", LoadOptions.PreserveWhitespace); whiteSpaceNodes = xmlTree3 .DescendantNodesAndSelf() .OfType<XText>() .Where(tNode => tNode.ToString().Trim().Length == 0) .Count(); Console.WriteLine("Count of white space nodes (preserving whitespace): {0}", whiteSpaceNodes); } }