Crash on XML::DOM Remove Child

PerlingTheUK has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello Monks, I am currently trying to get rid of some useless junk in an XML file. Infortunately when I use the removeChild function, The compilation is aborted. This occurs without any other error message using AS Perl 5.8.6 on Windows XP Pro. The code is as follows:

sub remove_element {

  my $elem = shift;
  my @children = @{$elem->getChildNodes()};

  if (@children == 0 ){
    print $elem->toString;
    my $parent = $elem->getParentNode();
    $parent->removeChild( $elem ); 
    return;
  }

  for my $child ( @children ){
    print $child->toString();
    remove_element( $child );
  }
}
[download]

Cheers,
PerlingTheUK

Comment on Crash on XML::DOM Remove Child Download Code

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Re: Crash on XML::DOM Remove Child by rg0now (Chaplain) on Mar 09, 2005 at 00:27 UTC
I am not entirely sure if I understand your question correctly. You seem to indicate that if you give the above code to `perl -MXML::DOM -e`, then it ceases to compile. If this is the case, then I can not reproduce this on Debian Linux testing, Perl 5.8.4. Yet, if this is the case, then I pretty much recommend you reporting this at the perl-xml mailinglist (Perl-XML <at> listserv.ActiveState.com). I have got some really useful tips there in the past with similar problems. On the other hand, if you mean that your code crashes when it gets to executing `removeChild()`, neither this I can reproduce on Linux, so it must be the first case... rg0now	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Crash on XML::DOM Remove Child by PerlingTheUK (Hermit) on Mar 09, 2005 at 10:31 UTC
No, It compiles fine and reads the xml File. I then want to delete some parts of it before writing a smaller file. When running the quoted function, it exits with the given error message (as in the Xemacs window) and exits. I am not sure if this is something I do wrong or if there is a bug in the AS - Version of my XML::DOM. Cheers, PerlingTheUK	[reply]
Re^3: Crash on XML::DOM Remove Child by rg0now (Chaplain) on Mar 09, 2005 at 10:47 UTC
What I don't really understand is that what makes you think that it is the `removeChild` method that causes the crash. Have you tried to debug the program? Have you tried to place `print` statements to narrow the possibility of a wrong guess? If the problem persists and you can reproduce it on other boxen/platforms, please, try to post the XML snippet and the (shortened) code here or the perl-xml list, and I will try to hunt it down. rg0now	[reply] [d/l] [select]