I'm having a really hard time reading your example (please use code tags?).. Understanding your result is difficult too. I'll make some "guesses" at what you might be trying to do and hope this helps...

I really do not know what you meant to do with the XML document you posted from your comments, so I am left to guess at what you meant to do. Here is my version:

<hosts>
  <host name="jimmy">
    <function>web</function>
    <function>dns</function>
    <location>miami</location>
  </host>
  <host name="haffa">
    <function>nfs</function>
    <function>quake</function>
    <location>hell</location>
  </host>
</hosts>
[download]

Now here's the code to parse it: (I did not know what you meant to do with the hash you passed into XMLin, so I removed it)

use XML::Simple;
use Data::Dumper;
# create object
my $xml = new XML::Simple ();
# read XML file
my $data = $xml->XMLin("/tmp/hosts.xml");
print Dumper($data);
[download]

And here is the output:

$VAR1 = {
          'host' => {
                    'haffa' => {
                               'function' => [
                                             'nfs',
                                             'quake'
                                           ],
                               'location' => 'hell'
                             },
                    'jimmy' => {
                               'function' => [
                                             'web',
                                             'dns'
                                           ],
                               'location' => 'miami'
                             }
                  }
        };
[download]

I think the results are fairly self-explanatory?

- dEvNuL