You give XML::Writer a reference to your variable $results_xml, and it will write its output directly into this variable - you can just say print $results_xml; to see the output. In the code you show, you are attempting to de-reference the variable $results_xml by writing $$results_xml, which isn't possible because $results_xml doesn't contain a reference to another variable, it contains a plain string (your XML). To fix the code you've shown, you could just write: $tempblock = $results_xml; (but without seeing the rest of your code, I'm not sure if you really need to make a copy). See perlreftut and perlref for more information on references.