While that is generally true, especially for generating XML files, i have yet to find another XML parser that is as simple and easy to use. XML::Rules is somewhat promising, but still adds a lot of extra complications.

When it comes to parsing config files, i generally don't give an f### if it validates against some XSD schema (and in usually don't bother to even create one). I don't need "sequential parsing" or "streaming" because of the file size. All i want to do is turn that file into a hashref. And i don't care about all the "advanced" XML stuff like namespaces. The only reason i'm not using JSON is because i find XML easier to read and write by hand.

For some time now i've been thinking of either forking XML::Simple (and rip out all the "write XML files" stuff) or writing a wrapper for something like XML::Rules that emulates the XML::Simple behaviour as close as possible. In my humble opinion, we really need a module that's as simple as XML::Simple, at least for reading XML config files. Basically the equivalent of simplicity to parsing a JSON file.