When I tried the following code I received no errors. Perhaps you need to tell us a little more about your problem? Flesh the code below out until you can reproduce the error that you are seeing, or tell us more about your context if the code below generates your error.

use strict;
use warnings;
use XML::Simple;

my $xs1 = new XML::Simple ();
my $doc = $xs1->XMLin (<DATA>)

__DATA__
<end/>
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For future reference you might want to take a look at this and this.

Without a snippet of code that shows what you did and at least one short sample of the input that causes this error, noone is going to be able to do anything but guess. Please do yourself a favour and read How (Not) To Ask A Question (see also the recent I know what I mean. Why don't you?).

Makeshifts last the longest.

The problem in this case is a bug in the XML::SAX::RTF installer, which registers itself in ...lib.../XML/SAX/ParserDetails.ini. This ini file is used to determine the default SAX parser and since XML::SAX::RTF was installed most recently, it is the default. Unfortunately, XML::SAX::RTF is not an XML parser (despite generating SAX events) so it should be removed from the ParserDetails.ini file.

Yes that did work, I just emptied this file!!
But I'm still confused why the following code is not working

My script:

#! /usr/bin/perl

use XML::Simple ;

my $xs1 = XML::Simple->new(); 

my $doc = $xs1->XMLin("test.xml"); 

foreach my $key (keys (%{$doc->{breakfast_menu}})){ 
        print "$key --> $doc->{breakfast_menu}->{$key}->{name}\n" ;
}
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And here is a snippet of my xml file

<breakfast_menu>
  <food>
    <name>Belgian Waffles</name>
    <price>$5.95</price>
    <description>
      two of our famous Belgian Waffles with plenty of real maple syru
+p
    </description>
    <calories>650</calories>
  </food>
  .....
</breakfast_menu>
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I thought XML::Simple was simple :(

Thanks
Luca

But I'm still confused why the following code is not working

If you don't enable the KeepRoot option (and you generally don't want it enabled), then the outermost tags from your XML will not be in the resulting hashref. So here's a version that's probably closer to what you want:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use XML::Simple ;

my $xs1 = XML::Simple->new(); 

my $breakfast_menu = $xs1->XMLin("test.xml"); 

foreach my $key (keys (%$breakfast_menu)){ 
    print "$key --> $breakfast_menu->{$key}->{name}\n" ;
}
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The fact that you're not specifying any options at all in you XMLin() call is a big red flag. This article gives some background on the basic options you ought to be using.

I thought XML::Simple was simple :(

Well, the single biggest shortcoming of XML::Simple is that it can't read your mind :-)

This article has some advice on using LibXML instead.