i expect the server elements to be put into an array. this is my perl

What exactly do you mean by that? Can you post a shortened example of what you want the structure to look like?

Based on a best guess of what you meant I changed my code to look like:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use XML::Simple;
use Data::Dumper;


my $stuff=XMLin(undef,KeyAttr=>['server']);


print Dumper($stuff);
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which then takes the server element and treats everything enclosed by that as an array. Is that what you were after? Short sample of the structure:

$VAR1 = {
          'server' => [
                      {
                        'location' => 'atlanta',
                        'name' => 'cns04-fs16',
                        'event' => {
                                   'sparedata' => 'Disk on cns04-fs16 
+at WARNING  level',
                                   'entry' => {
                                              'color' => 'yellow',
                                              'desc' => '/mail/vol/cns
+04-fs16 (9 3%) has reached the defined disk space WARNING level (92%)
+'
                                            },
                                   'received_by' => '10.10.10.10',
                                   'name' => 'disk',
                                   'state' => {
                                              'name' => 'online',
                                              'data' => {}
                                            },
                                   'received_at' => 'Thu Mar 30 15:03:
+16 EST 200 6',
                                   'length' => '6.43 days',
                                   'color' => 'yellow'
                                 },
                        'grouping' => {
                                      'secondary' => 'Mail Filers',
                                      'primary' => 'Storage Servers'
                                    }
                      },
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---

Peter L. Berghold -- Unix Professional
Peter -at- Berghold -dot- Net; AOL IM redcowdawg Yahoo IM: blue_cowdawg