Hi, I've never used perl with XML. Can you please help me with the following questions.Also if you can give me any good web sites for perl with XML (basic concepts). 
use strict;
my $sampleXML = qq(
<?xml version="1.0"?> 
        <response>
    <portfolio>
        <portID>Test</portID>
        <portname>Consors Test Portfolio</portname>
        <xloss>-5124.88530628508</xloss>
        <riskgrade>129.39826419201</riskgrade>
        <value>114260.469443242</value>
        <divriskgrade>68.4645462588067<divriskgrade>
        <divxloss>-2131.56017715564</divxloss>

        <position>
            <posID>Bayer</posID>
            <xloss>-197.254957013363</xloss>
            <riskgrade>148.955450569846</riskgrade>
            <value>6138</value>
            <riskimpact>-0.00822567904632093</riskimpact>
        </position>
        <position>
            <posID>Bond</posID>
            <xloss>-157.580177492695</xloss>
            <riskgrade>29.3498701802706</riskgrade>
            <value>18922.4694432424</value>
        </position>        
                </portfolio>
        </response>                
);

$portresults = parsePortfolioResponse($sampleXML);

sub parsePortfolioResponse {
        my $response = $_[0];
        
        my %portresults;
        
        my $stats = "riskgrade|riskimpact|xloss|value|divriskgrade|div
+xloss|posID";

        #assumes portstats come first
        my $ref = "portfolio";
        while ($response =~ m!<($stats)>(.*?)</($stats)>!g) {
                if ($1 eq "posID") {
                        $ref = $2;
                } else {                        
                        $portresults{$ref}->{$1} = $2 if $2;
                }
        }
                              
        return \%portresults;
}       
      
###END SAMPLE CODE

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Questions: 1. Why do we pass the response to the function rather than just using it (under mod_perl)?

2. Why is the XML in $sampleXML badly formed (hint: check the tags)? How will the contents of $portresults differ from the desired results because of this?

3. What is the value of "$portresults->{portfolio}->{riskgrade}"?

3. What is the value of "sprintf("%.2f", -$portresults->{Bayer}->{xloss} )"?

4. What is the first element of "sort {lc($b) cmp lc($a)} keys %{$portresults}" ?

5. Given an HTML page, what would "$HTML =~ s/<(?!\/*[bi]>).*?>/x/g;" do?

Edit Masem 2001-10-25 - Code tag on last question

In reply to Perl with XML by Anonymous Monk

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