I have discovered adding utf8decode => 1 to the xml2hash makes it work now but I don't really understand why. I am doing anything wrong here? What might have changed in XML::Fast to cause this to happen?

The changelog isn't really verbose, but I suspect it might be #71532 which was marked as fixed recently. There is also #71533 which is still open, and which indicates that the module might have issues with Unicode data in general. I haven't investigated deeper than that*, but if you have verified with a hex dump that your input file is indeed ISO-8859-1, where "ø" should be represented by 0xF8, and you have verified with Devel::Peek that the Perl variable contains the correct data² ("ø" is Unicode U+00F8), then the error message "[�ndby IF]", where � is the Unicode character "Replacement Character" (U+FFFD), indicates that there is indeed some strange Unicode stuff going on in the module, since you are opening the file with the correct encoding².

* Update before posting: I see ablanke has investigated the code.

² Update: Actually, ikegami is right that the XML parser should be doing the decoding.

In reply to Re: Problem upgrading XML::Fast from 0.11 to 0.17 (updated) by haukex
in thread Problem upgrading XML::Fast from 0.11 to 0.17 by mje

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.