That's my point — it is not simple nor automatic. In Perl, you design Perl datastructures or object constructors and subsequent manipulators. In XML, you design a good XML-ish way of doing it. .NET tries to make you think the in-program structure and the XML are one and the same, but the design issues are different, and you end up with a lame serialization of the in-program data, not a proper XML-mindset design.

So, in general, have the user write a function that takes the Element and return the Perl object. But, have a nifty library of things to make doing that easy.

I agree your example really needs a general DOM. But most real program designed to act on information read from an XML file will have data designed for that purpose; e.g. it will be sane and meaningful.

—John