Here is my code:

use v5.16;
use XML::Simple;

my $HOME = $ENV{HOMEPATH};

my $fn = "$HOME" . "\\documents\\output.txt";

open (my $out,">$fn") or die  "$fn open failed for write $!";
my @fields  = qw(name medium subject url);
# read in the xml from file

my $site_xml =
  XMLin( 'C:/Users/mark/Documents/sitesout.xml', forcearray => 1 );
# print a header for the output
print($out, '-' x 70, "\n");
printf ($out,"%-35s%-15s%8s%8s\n", 'name', 'medium', 'subject', 'url' 
+);
print($out, '-' x 70, "\n");
# fetch the data, dereferencing (probably incorrectly)
for my $site ( @{ $site_xml->{site} } ) {
    # try to print to a file 
    printf ($out, "%-35s", $site->{ ( $fields[0] ) }->[0] );
    printf ($out, "%-15s", $site->{ ( $fields[1] ) }->[0] );
    printf($out, "%8s",   $site->{ ( $fields[2] ) }->[0] );
    printf($out, "%8s\n", $site->{ ( $fields[3] ) }->[0] );
    
    #print to standard output
    #printf ("%-35s", $site->{ ( $fields[0] ) }->[0] );
    #printf ("%-15s", $site->{ ( $fields[1] ) }->[0] );
    #printf("%8s",   $site->{ ( $fields[2] ) }->[0] );
    #printf("%8s\n", $site->{ ( $fields[3] ) }->[0] );
}
close $out;

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I'm trying to learn something about processing XML in Perl, starting with the XML::Simple package. The entire program is in the code I've posted here. You'll see that there are 2 sections of code to print the info captured by XMLin(). One is a printf to standard output (presently commented out), the other printf to a file.

Printing to standard output gives the expected results. Printing to a file yields only 'GLOB(0x60d658)' repeated more times than I care to count, and a 0 byte file created.

I am perplexed, any pointers would be appreciated.

I'm on a Windows 7 64 bit laptop, running activestate perl v5.16

In reply to XML::Simple and output by expat

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