Hi guys and gals

So I am a little new to XML::Parser but I have read the docs and PODs and know that this module has what I need but I am a little stuck on the implementation.
I have this XML:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<list name="name list">
        <person>
                <firstname>Paul</firstname>
                <lastname>Rutter</lastname>
                <age>24</age>
        </person>
        <person>
                        <firstname>Ruth</firstname>
                        <lastname>Brewster</lastname>
                        <age>22</age>
        </person>
        <person>
                        <firstname>Cas</firstname>
                        <lastname>Creer</lastname>
                        <age>23</age>
        </person>
</list>

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and I have this perl script: 
#!/usr/bin/perl

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

$parser = new XML::Parser( Style => 'Tree' );
my $tree = $parser->parsefile( 'testxml.xml' );

print Dumper( $tree );

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which prints the contents of the xml to the screen. However what I really want to do is Parse through the file taking out each firstname and putting them in an array. At the very least I would quite like to just know how to 'get at' to a node.

The $tree - is it an array? a scalar? a variable? little confused there you see. If it is a scalar, how do I get access to it?

Thanks in advance

In reply to Trees in XML by Anonymous Monk

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