I've managed to get this working...
That, richill, I'd consider a result! Make a backup and lock it in the safe. :-)
I'm worried that creating a new XML::Simple()xml object for every line is a bit wasteful...
Perhaps consider parsing the XML once and storing the data in a hash? 
$xml_hash($LinkToPage} = ($New_location);

[download]
Then look at every HTML file checking if any links are in your lookup table and make the change if necessary.

For changing the HTML I would consider a parser. There are many and the one I frequently use is HTML::TokeParser::Simple. Have a look and get back to us if you need a hand.

update: added example of using a parser.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use HTML::TokeParser::Simple;

my %xml_hash = (
  'link1.html' => 'linka.html',
  'link2.html' => 'linkb.html',
);

my $html_file = 'links.html';
my $p = HTML::TokeParser::Simple->new($html_file)
  or die "couldn't parse $html_file";

my $new_html;
while (my $t = $p->get_token){
  
  if ($t->is_start_tag('a')){
    my $href = $t->get_attr('href');
    if (exists $xml_hash{$href}){
      $t->set_attr('href', $xml_hash{$href});
    }
  }
      
  $new_html .= $t->as_is;
  
}

print "$new_html\n";

[download]
input html: 
<html>
<head>
  <title>links</title>
</head>

<body>
  <p>links</p>
  <a href="link1.html">link1</a>
  <a href="link2.html">link2</a>
</body>
</html>

[download]
output: 
<html>
<head>
  <title>links</title>
</head>

<body>
  <p>links</p>
  <a href="linka.html">link1</a>
  <a href="linkb.html">link2</a>
</body>
</html>

[download]

In reply to Re: using xml and perl to perform a search and replace on html files by wfsp
in thread using xml and perl to perform a search and replace on html files by richill

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