The quick and dirty regex way.

DO NOT DO THIS WITHOUT A VERY GOOD REASON
XML::Simple and/or XML::Twig are much much better because they make no assumptions about the order of the elements nor about the possibility that the element may change (e.g. the type='' part could at some point be a different type).

for (split(m!</element>!, $xml)) {
  next unless 
    m!<NetChange type='float'>([^<]*)<.*<LastTradePrice type='float'>(
+[^<]*)<.*<LastTradeDate type='java.util.Date'>([^<]*)<!s;
  print "Net: $1, Price $2, Date $3\n";
}

__output__

Net: 9.06, Price 1420.2, Date 2002-11-18 07:01:00 CST
Net: 0.0, Price 7850.29, Date 2002-10-11 10:07:00 CDT
Net: 0.69, Price 910.52, Date 2002-11-18 07:01:00 CST
Net: 1.48, Price 387.4, Date 2002-11-18 07:01:00 CST
Net: 1.24, Price 620.239, Date 2002-11-18 06:24:00 CST
[download]

Astute perl programmers will realise that it would be possible to deal with changes to the tag names and to their order, which are the limitations I mentioned above. But when perfectly good modules such as XML::Simple and XML::Twig exist then you should use them instead because the complex regex will be far less easy to maintain.

Dingus

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