okay, I found my mistake after digging through the code again.

my $xml = @_; <br>
[download]

should read:

my ($xml) = @_;<br>
[download]

*slap*

sorry for wasting your time, and thanks for the hints/tips towards this! Still got alot of worke to do to tidy up the code, think i was just blind not seeing this in the first place.

thanks again :)