Suppose I have a text file in the following format:

<item><key1>someValue</key1><key2>someValue</key2><key3>someValue</key
+3><key4>someValue</key4></item><item><key1>someValue</key1><key2>some
+Value</key2><key3>someValue</key3><key4>someValue</key4></item><item>
+<key1>someValue</key1><key2>someValue</key2><key3>someValue</key3><ke
+y4>someValue</key4></item> ... etc.

[download]

I need to run reports on this data (do a running total on some of the values; output some of these values to the screen as a table, etc.), and I assume the best way to do that is to turn it into an array of hashes: one item for each element of the array, and then the hashes will be the key names/values of each individual item. What is the best way to do this? I can read the data in like so: 

my $filename = "/path/to/my/inputfile.txt";

my $filehandle;

if (not open $filehandle, '<', $filename)
{
    print "ERROR: Could not open file $filename\n";
    return 0;
}

while (my $line = $filehandle)
{
    chomp($line);

    # lots of stuff goes here!!!
}

[download]

I guess my first step is to create an array by splitting on "</item><item>" right at the "><" point (so "</item>" goes to element n and "<item>" goes to n + 1). How do I do that?

In reply to How do I create an array of hashes from an input text file? by MrSnrub

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