use feature qw(say);
use Data::Dumper;

my $data =<<'XML-type';
<item><key1>someValue</key1><key2>someValue</key2><key3>someValue</key3>
<key4>someValue</key4></item><item><key1>someValue</key1><key2>someValue
</key2><key3>someValue</key3><key4>someValue</key4></item><item>
<key1>someValue</key1><key2>someValue</key2><key3>someValue</key3><key4>someValue</key4></item>
XML-type

my @processed;
local $/ = '</item>';

open STRH , '<', \($data);
my @items = <STRH>;
close STRH;


@processed = map { 
		my $item =$_;
		$item =~ s/<.?item>//g;
		push @processed, 
                 {$item =~ m { <([^>]+)>([^<]+)< }gx};
		} @items;

print Dumper \@processed;