Apart from the other comments (it's zero-is-false syndrome), I'll add that you should really be using IO::File, rather than FileHandle, as it's the "newer" version of OO files.

Also, and perhaps more significantly (depending on what your aim is - learning or doing it for serious work), you have a long way to go before this is "right". Currently the only parser in Perl getting anywhere near compliance to the XML spec is my XML::SAX::PurePerl, and I'm so not finished it's not even funny. At the moment PurePerl has about 3000 lines of code (and very few docs or comments), and I've got shit loads of stuff left to implement (at the moment it's careful enough to skip over stuff I haven't implemented yet).

Don't let me discourage you though - it can be fun writing hand crafted parsers, but with XML you really do have to know the spec inside out.