Quite simply $hash_when_cat_eq_special is a pointer to a hash. So you can do your normal hash operations on it. The ->pointer() function returns this for you.

In terms of the foreach:

foreach my $elem ( @{ $xml_obj->{list}{value} } ) {
    $hash_of_subtree = $elem->pointer() ;
}
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The advantage here is that $xml_obj, $xml_obj->{list} ... are all Objects of type XML::Smart and can always be used as either a hash OR an array.

To extract your data you can simply use the 'pointer' function ( $xml_smart_obj->pointer() )that will return the hash structure or the 'content' function ( $xml_smart_obj->content() ) that will return the contents of a node.

Harish, I see that when using content() to return contents of the node and that $xml_smart_obj was always returning one element, whereas the xml has multiple entries for the tag <parameter>. 1. How to list down all the pointers/contents for the tag <parameter> 2. Can I see the array size using $#xml_obj ? Thanks

->pointer will actually give you the tree starting from where you have traversed to in the xml_smart object. It will be a hash which you can use like an ordinary hash.

You can traverse the object using the method described above and it will move the pointer.

         ___________node1
        |  
root ---|-----------node2
        |___________node3
                     ^
                     |________________Pointer could be here.
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Now when you ask for ->content() it will give you the content at node3 and if you ask for ->pointer it will give you the sub-tree starting from node3 in a hash.

Hope that helps - Let me know if you need further clarification.