There's a few things that determine which XML parser is used in XML::Simple, see
. You probably don't want to be using XML::SAX::PurePerl if you can help it, if possible use either some other XML::SAX parser (e.g. XML::LibXML::SAX::Parser or XML::SAX::Expat) or the expat based XML::Parser. I wonder how you got XML::SAX::ParserFactory installed without XML::SAX::PurePerl since they are in the same bundle
.