Most people wouldn't drive from their home in Los Angeles, to New York, and back to Los Angeles to visit their next door neighbor. If you want to convert that data to a hash, why do you have to take a trip to XML along the way? And what do you want the XML to look like? What is the specification (DTD)?

For that matter, what do you want the hash to look like? I see an array (param :, param :, param :) of hashes of arrays. But maybe I should squint a little harder.

Update: lol, I think CountZero and I must have been drinking the same Kool-Aid.