Really interesting bobf, thanks for such a complete response.

I didn't spot the warnings because the script spews out over a page full of prints almost immediately, but they were there though.

Using the fact the these inner values are rebound in anonymous subroutines, I came up with the followng, but I'm just playing now :-)

Thanks to everyone, this has been really helpful.

use XML::Parser;
use strict;

parse_stuff();

sub parse_stuff {
    my $indent;
    my $parser = new XML::Parser(
      Handlers => {Start => sub { $indent++; handle_start($indent, @_)
+ },
                   End   => sub { $indent--; handle_end(@_) } 
                  }
    );    
    $parser->parsefile('/tmp/ra.xml');
}

sub handle_start {
    my ($indent, $p, $el, %atts) = @_;
    print "-"x$indent . "$el\n";
}

sub handle_end {
    # whatever
}
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