It didn't turn apple into an array with sqr brackets. It returned a hash. Exactly what I wanted. A hash all the time for one or two elements. I was surprised to get a hash because I would have expected sqr brackets from ForceArray.

This really seems like odd behavior but I'll take it. It's exactly what I wanted.

Take this updated code for example:

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

my $text=<<EOF;
<main>
  <apple name="date" value="1231210"/>
  <apple name="time" value="235959"/>
  <cookies name="date" value="1231210"/>
  <cookies name="time" value="235959"/>
  <banana name="date" value="1231210"/>
  <butter name="date" value="1231210"/>
  <orange>one</orange>
  <milk>one</milk>
  <grape>one</grape>
  <grape>two</grape>
</main>
EOF
my $p1 = new XML::Simple();
my $tree;
my $config = eval {
   $tree= $p1->XMLin($text,
              ,ForceArray => ['banana','apple','orange']  # bingo!!!
              )
};
die("$@\n Ending") if ($@);

print "\$tree " . Dumper(\$tree) . "\n";

exit 0;
[download]

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$tree $VAR1 = \{
            'cookies' => {
                         'time' => {
                                   'value' => '235959'
                                 },
                         'date' => {
                                   'value' => '1231210'
                                 }
                       },
            'banana' => {
                        'date' => {
                                  'value' => '1231210'
                                }
                      },
            'apple' => {
                       'time' => {
                                 'value' => '235959'
                               },
                       'date' => {
                                 'value' => '1231210'
                               }
                     },
            'orange' => [
                        'one'
                      ],
            'butter' => {
                        'value' => '1231210',
                        'name' => 'date'
                      },
            'grape' => [
                       'one',
                       'two'
                     ],
            'milk' => 'one'
          };


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[download]

It didn't turn apple into an array with sqr brackets.

That's not what I said. I said KeyAttr turned apple's square brackets into what you wanted. (The default appears to be KeyAttr => 'name'.)

The square brackets is what you have before XML::Simple starts messing around with your tree. ForceArray prevents the flattening of the arrays that occur when they only have one element.