I learned Perl by forcing myself to use it. I have to get my hands dirty if I'm ever going to remember how to do something. Every time I wanted to write a shell script or C++ program to do something, I forced myself to do it in Perl instead. If I didn't know how to do something, I searched the perldocs and the Web until I figured out how to do it. After a few months of this, I had become comfortable enough with Perl that it became my first tool of choice for lots of tasks where I formerly would have used something else. So my advice is: force yourself to use it, every day, and take the time and effort not to let yourself slip back into whatever else you may be comfortable using.

-- Mike

--
XML::Simpler does not require XML::Parser or a SAX parser. It does require File::Slurp.
-- grantm, perldoc XML::Simpler