null

Edit: Since the original node was considered for reaping and replaced with a properly formatted one while I was composing a reply, I deleted it from here and posted in the valid thread, with the goal of not extending the life of the reaped thread. So much for that :P

See Why shouldn't I delete a node or its content? in How do I change/delete my post?

Originally this is what 1nickt's posted instead of "null"

First, please enclose your code and data inside <code></code> tags. It's almost impossible to read otherwise.

Second, please post working code. You typed in some code that has an error (@xml and $data have their sigils transposed); it makes it hard to help you when you don't paste your actual code here.

Third, you must use strict; and use warnings; in your programs, otherwise you are rejecting Perl's built-in safety features, and there's not much point in helping when a programmer is doing that.

Finally, for your question, XML::Simple maybe "best" for you, but not if you want correct results. It has a lot of limitations (see its own documentation), including in this way: it will only return one element when one or more have the same key:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use XML::Simple;
use Data::Dumper;

my $xml=new XML::Simple;

local $/;

my @data= $xml->XMLin( <DATA> );

print Dumper(\@data);

__DATA__
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<staff>
  <employee>
    <name>Pradeep</name>
    <age>23</age>
    <sex>M</sex>
    <department>Coder</department>
  </employee>
  <employee>
    <name>Pradeep</name>
    <age>22</age>
    <sex>M</sex>
    <department>HR</department>
  </employee>
</staff>
[download]

Output:

$VAR1 = [
          {
            'employee' => {
                            'Pradeep' => {
                                           'department' => 'HR',
                                           'age' => '22',
                                           'sex' => 'M'
                                         }
                          }
          }
        ];
[download]

It works fine when the keys are distinct:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use XML::Simple;
use Data::Dumper;

my $xml=new XML::Simple;

local $/;

my @data= $xml->XMLin( <DATA> );

print Dumper(\@data);

__DATA__
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<staff>
  <employee>
    <name>Pradeep</name>
    <age>23</age>
    <sex>M</sex>
    <department>Coder</department>
  </employee>
  <employee>
    <name>Douglas</name>
    <age>22</age>
    <sex>M</sex>
    <department>HR</department>
  </employee>
</staff>
[download]

Output:

$VAR1 = [
          {
            'employee' => {
                            'Pradeep' => {
                                           'age' => '23',
                                           'department' => 'Coder',
                                           'sex' => 'M'
                                         },
                            'Douglas' => {
                                           'age' => '22',
                                           'sex' => 'M',
                                           'department' => 'HR'
                                         }
                          }
          }
        ];
[download]

Many monks recommend using XML::Twig or XML::LibXML instead.




The way forward always starts with a minimal test.

when you say "you must use strict; and use warnings; "

you must enumerate the problems in OPs code that would be caught by use strict; use warnings;