Ironically I am using XML::LibXML later on in the same program. I opted to use XML::Simple because XML::LibXML was choking on a very large file. My solution was to break it up into smaller sections so that the majority of the data could be parsed. XML::Simple has no problem reading in all the data I fed it, but the outputing structure is not what I desired.

My ultimate conclusion was to skip a data structure altogether for breaking up the file and just do a straight regex across the whole file. This preserves my structure exactly and allows me to specify which tags to separate across. Since I am working with a set standard (docbook) there should be no surprising or malformed tags (unless I am fed a corrupted file).

What you said about being beyond XML::Simple's capabilities, led me in this direction. Thanks for letting me know that it was time to go down another path.

sub splitNode2{
    my ($name, $root, $tag, $filename) = @_;
    
    #print "opening file [$filename]\n";
    if(!open(READ, "$filename")){
        die "Cannot open file [$filename] for reading\n";
    }
    
    my $content = "";
    while(my $line = <READ>){
        $content .= $line;
    }
    
    #print "matching <$tag>\n";
    
    my @matches = $content =~ /(<$tag.*?>.*?<\/$tag>)/sg;
    
    if(scalar(@matches) < 1){
        writeFile($name, "", $content);  #writes the string to a file
        return 0;
    }
    my $count = 1;
    foreach (@matches){
        writeFile("$name"."_"."$count", "", $_);
        $count++;
        #print "match: $_\n\n\n";
    }

}
[download]