The xmltwig.org and docs specify parse    $string or \*OPEN_FILEHANDLE among twig's methods.

So you are right: I had to pass an handle not an iterator (?) like <DATA>

I dunno when I took this bad habit but if you look at this and this other one and this other too and probably many others of mines, $twig->parse(<DATA>) works!!

So $twig->parse(<DATA>) does not works with your example but i can confirm that passing the filehandle $twig->parse(\*DATA) or even $twig->parse(*DATA) works as expected.

Can be that wrong form works (at least sometimes) because of the XML::Twig ability to parse streams of XML?

L*