If you intend to do much with XML, you will probably find the XML modules on the CPAN very useful. Here is a little sample of what XML::Simple can do:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;

use XML::Simple;
use Data::Dumper;

my $s = '<foo><color>red</color><color>white</color><color>blue</color
+></foo>';
print $s,"\n";
my $parsed = XMLin($s);
print Dumper($parsed);
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Voilà:

<foo><color>red</color><color>white</color><color>blue</color></foo>
$VAR1 = {
          'color' => [
                       'red',
                       'white',
                       'blue'
                     ]
        };
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In english, $parsed is a hash containing one key, 'color', whose value is a reference to an array containing the values 'red', 'white', and 'blue'. E.g.

print $_,"\n" for ( @{$parsed->{color}} )
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