in reply to A data structure for XML generation

If you require each array to have the following format you can complete eliminate the array around the child tags. The position alone is enough to determine whether or not an array element is a nested tag. Eliminating the extra square brackets around each tag set would help keep the indentation from going halfway across the page or more.

  [0] tag name
  [1] attribute hash reference
  [2] data
  [3] ...: one array ref for each nested tag

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Your sample data would then look like this:

[ family => { name => 'Kawasaki' } => undef,
  [father => {} => 'Yasushisa' ],
  [mother => {} => 'Chizuko' ],
  [children => {} => undef,
    [girl => {} => 'Shiori'],
    [boy  => {} => 'Yasuke'],
    [boy  => {} => 'Kairi']
  ]
]

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Best, beth

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Re^2: A data structure for XML generation
by dolmen (Beadle) on Aug 12, 2009 at 23:50 UTC
    The attribute hash ref can also be optional: if ref($tag->[1]) ne 'HASH', the tag has no attributes and $tag->[1] is the first child node. So position is only relative and undefs are not needed. 
    [ family => { name => 'Kawasaki' },
  [father => 'Yasushisa' ],
  [mother => 'Chizuko' ],
  [children =>
    [girl => 'Shiori' ],
    [boy  => 'Yasuke' ],
    [boy  => 'Kairi' ]
  ]
]

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