I am guessing that you are looking for code that will print entries that contain a certain, minimum, number of matches. If so:

use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

my @searchwords = qw|Bird SnaKe|;
$|++;
print "MINIMUM NUMBER OF MATCHES PLEASE: ";
my $minMatches;
$minMatches = <STDIN>;
chomp($minMatches);

use XML::Simple;
undef $/;

open(H, qq|oo.dat|) or die $!;
my $filestuff = <H>;
close(H);

#print $filestuff;

my $newXML = XMLin($filestuff);

my $ref = $newXML;

#stripe your values

foreach my $word (@searchwords) {
  foreach(keys %$ref){
      if (index($ref->{$_}->{words},lc($word)) > 0){
      $ref->{$_}->{confidence}++;
          push @{$ref->{$_}->{WORDSFOUND}}, $word;
      }
  }
}

#print the ones you like
foreach(keys %$ref){
   my $outline = qq|FOUND @{$ref->{$_}->{WORDSFOUND}} in $_\t| . $ref-
+>{$_}->{words} . qq|\n|;
   print $outline if ($ref->{$_}->{confidence} >= $minMatches);
}
[download]

Prints:

perl useoo.pl
MINIMUM NUMBER OF MATCHES PLEASE: 1
FOUND Bird in MS_1    dog, cat, fish, bird
FOUND Bird in MS_2    dog, cat, fish, bird, cow, goat
FOUND Bird SnaKe in MS_3    dog, cat, fish, bird, snake, orange

C:\Temp>perl useoo.pl
perl useoo.pl
MINIMUM NUMBER OF MATCHES PLEASE: 2
FOUND Bird SnaKe in MS_3    dog, cat, fish, bird, snake, orange
[download]

---

---

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! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

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:
	&		&
	<		&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.