This is a little program I wrote to help me A) get to grips with Perl references. B) Understand the stuctures returned by XMLIn.

It may give you a place to start.

#!e:/Perl/bin/Perl.exe -w
use strict;
use warnings;
use XML::Simple;

my $file = shift or die <<USAGE;

Usage: $0 <xmlfile> [label] [0|1]
Where;
    <xmlfile> is the path/name of the .xml file to parse.
    [label] is the base of the references as output (default:'\$xml->'
+).
    [0|1] indicate whether to append the contents of the tags. (defaul
+t:0 (no)).

    Parses an XML file using XML::Simple and (if the doc is well-forme
+d) outputs the perl references to access the elements of the structur
+e,
    optionally appending the contents of the tags.
USAGE

my $xml = XMLin( $file, parseropts => [ ErrorContext => 1, ], forcearr
+ay => 0, );

sub walk {
    my ($label,  $valuesFlag) = (shift||"xml->", shift||0);
    my ($output, $tab) = ( "", ".   ");
    foreach my $thing (shift) {
        if ( ref($thing) eq "HASH" ) {
            $output .= ( !ref ${$thing}{$_}  )
                      ? "$label\{$_\}" .
                        ( $valuesFlag
                        ? " := ${$thing}{$_}\n"
                        : "\n" )
                       : walk( $label . "{$_}", $valuesFlag, ${$thing}
+{$_} )
                foreach  ( keys %$thing );
        }
        if ( ref($thing) eq "ARRAY" ) {
            $output .= ( !ref @{$thing}[$_]  )
                    ?  "$label\[$_\] " .
                        ( $valuesFlag
                        ? " := @{$thing}[$_]\n"
                         : "\n" )
                    : walk( $label . "[$_]", $valuesFlag, @{$thing}[$_
+] )
                foreach  ( 0..  @{$thing} -1  );
        }
        $output .= " := $thing\n" if ( ref $thing eq "SCALAR" );
    }
    return $output;
}

(my $label= shift) =~ s/^(.+)+$/$1->/;
#print $label . "\n";
print walk $label, shift||0, $xml;
[download]

When I run this on your sample XML using the following command line:

xmlrefs.pl C:\test\items.xml "" 1 >itemlist.refs
[download]

where items.xml is your sample XML; "" is a place holder for an optional alternative base tag (I know getopt::std/long!); and the "1" indicates I want to see the contents of the tags as well.

Gives the following output.

xml->{Category1} := General
xml->{Origin} := Canada
xml->{Description} := A wonderful table.
xml->{DlrItemNum} := 1
xml->{Category2} := Old Products
xml->{Length} := 5.18
xml->{Title} := Table
xml->{Width} := 3.56
xml->{Circa} := Early 20th Century
xml->{Dimensions} := 3.56 x 5.18m
[download]

I find that I tend to use a label (second param) of the form "#xml->" and append the output to the end of my perl script for easy reference. Specifying 0 (or omitting) the 3 parameter so that you don't get the contents of the tags make cut&paste even easier.

Update:Corrected SCALER=>SCALAR spelling. (Here, and in my copy of the prog:).

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