Good day Monks! I guess work's just got my head so clouded now that I can't read between the lines of what the tutorials are trying to tell me so forgive me if this is a dumb question.

I'm using XML::Simple 2.18 with Perl 5.8.8.

I'm trying to read a conf file, perform some stuff, and then in the conf file keep track of the last time I executed my code.

My XML looks like 
<conf>
  <box1>
     <username>me</username>
     <password>secret</password>
  </box1>
  <box2>
     <username>me</username>
     <password>secret</password>
  </box2>
 <lastRun>DATE</lastRun>
</conf>

[download]
DATE above should be epoch time. my simplified perl is 
#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use XML::Simple;
use Data::Dumper;

my $xmlConf = "file.xml";
my $conf = new XML::Simple(NoAttr => 1, KeyAttr => [], ForceArray => [
+qw(box1 box2)], KeepRoot => 1, SearchPath => "." );

my $confIn = $conf->XMLin("$xmlConf");
my $confOut = $conf->XMLout($confIn, OutputFile => $xmlConf);


print "Box 1: Username - $confIn->{conf}->{Box1}[0]->{username}, Passw
+ord - $confIn->{conf}->{Box1}[0]->{password}\n";

print "Box 2: Username - $confIn->{conf}->{Box2}[0]->{username}, Passw
+ord - $confIn->{conf}->{Box2}[0]->{password}\n";

my $epoch = time();

$confOut->{conf}->{lastRun} = $epoch;

[download]
My code runs fine up till I try to write out the update. I get
Can't use string ("1") as a HASH ref while "strict refs" in use at line foo

Thanks in advance for the forthcoming enlightenment!

Kevin

In reply to Yet another xml::simple question by sandcrawler

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