Hello Monks. I've gotten a lot more familiar with twig now and I'm glad I stuck with it. I'm hitting a snag with 'ancestors' now. Here's what I've got 
#!/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use XML::Twig;
my %Items;
my $twig=XML::Twig->new(
    twig_handlers => 
      {_all_ => sub {my $ancestors = ($_->ancestors);
        
if ($ancestors =~ m/us:ItemMasterHeader/ )
{my $element_match = ($_->tag); 
 my $coupled = join( ' - ' => 
$element_match,keys %{$_->atts},values %{$_->atts}),; 
          if (!defined $Items{$coupled}){$Items{$coupled}=1}   
        else {$Items{$coupled}++;}
}
                    },   
#If element is not in the hash, adds it
#If element is in the hash, adds the number of matches to the value

print "\n Elements \n \n";
foreach my $k (sort keys %Items) {print "$k => $Items{$k}\n";};

[download]
What I'm aiming for is a printout of all the descendants of Item master header and their attributes along with how many times each one occurs in the document. From what I gather on Twig, ancestors should return the tag of the ancestors of the element in list context. Instead I'm getting a printout of numbers between 1 and six. Any suggestions? Anything wrong with my code? Does ancestors return a count of ancestors?

In reply to xml twig ancestors not returning a list of ancestors by Mr.Churka

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