Thanks; that looks like it will work. Just curious, what do you mean store it as an array ref, or more importantly, why would it be better?

I realize that a bit more background might be useful; I am post processing a bunch of gigantic, complex XML files. The reason for the strings at the moment is to allow users to alter the the tagged output without my intervention. It is hard enough trying to explain the naming convention of XML and how to annotate it, let alone try and get them to understand Perl data structures/syntax. T