As long as the XML is indeed valid XML, then you have a whole slew of modules to choose from: XML

I Google'd for such XML and came up with the following code that uses XML::Simple

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
use XML::Simple;

my $xml = XMLin(\*DATA);

print Dumper $xml;

__DATA__
<BarGraph xmlns="http://example.org/bargraph">
  <Bar>
    <Title>Portland</Title>
    <Value>32</Value>
  </Bar>
  <Bar>
    <Title>Berlin</Title>
    <Value>20</Value>
  </Bar>
  <Bar>
    <Title>Pune</Title>
    <Value>16</Value>
  </Bar>
</BarGraph>
[download]

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)