my %created = ( AUTHOR => $author,
                TYPE   => $node_type,
                TIME   => $node_time,
                PARENT => $parent_id || '',
                KIDS   => [],
              );

##</code><code>##

for my $root ( sort { $a <=> $b } keys %created ) {
   my $parent = $created{$root}{PARENT};
   push @{$created{$parent}{KIDS}}, $root;
}

##</code><code>##

sub print_nodes {
   my @kids = @_;

   for my $id ( @nodes ) {
      print "Interesting data from node\n";
      if ( @{$created{$id}{KIDS} ) {
         print_nodes( @{$created{$id}{KIDS};
      }
      
   }
}

# Some work to make sure we start at the parents and move
# our way down correctly.  grep would work just as well.
my @topnodes = ();
for my $id ( keys %created ) {
   push @topnodes, $id unless ( defined( $created{$id}{PARENT} ) );
}

print_nodes( @topnodes );