OK, I am writing a program to grab an XML parse, possibly update). So I am using XML::Simple. My question is how can I, in a generic form reliably access the data if it is a hash or data or arrays ?

my $file1=shift; use XML::Simple; use Data::Dumper; my $xml; open (IN, "<$file1") || die "[r] '$file1' ($!)"; { local $/ = undef; $xml=<IN>; } close(IN); my $ref = XMLin($xml); foreach (keys %{$ref}) { print $_." ".$ref->{$_}." "."\n"; }
I have tried (and other permutations): scalar @$ref->{$_} (exists $ref->{$_}[0]) (defined $ref->{$_}[0]) Some just return the data, ones with [0] break when it is on a node that just returns the data. Tips/Pointers/RTFMs appreciated Andy


In reply to Parsing generic XML by aknipp

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.