Trying to avoid looping entirely might not be possible. I don't see anything in Win32::OLE that would help uniquely identify an object, and that would be required to avoid looping.

You could put limits on your looping (depth, time, number of objects visited, etc). Doing a breadth-first traversal (rather than a depth-first traversal) will make it easier to produce good results while adding limits. 

sub depth_first {
   my ($n) = @_;
   for ($n->children()) {
      depth_first($_);
   }
}

sub breadth_first {
   my @todo = @_;
   while (@todo) {
      my $n = shift(@todo);
      push @todo, $n->children();
   }
}

[download]

In reply to Re^5: How do I obtain a list of values for all the properties of a Word document using Win32::OLE? by ikegami
in thread How do I obtain a list of values for all the properties of a Word document using Win32::OLE? by romandas

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • 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! —
  • 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:
    & &amp;
    < &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.