For playing with Perl data structures, read: perldoc perldsc

I used XML::Parser before I was aware of parsers which use method calls to extract information, such as XML::Twig. It was worth the investment in time for me to switch.

use warnings;
use strict;
use XML::Twig;

my $str = '
<booklist>
   <book type="technical">
      <author>Book 1 author 1</author>
      <author>Book 1 author 2</author>
      <title>Book 1 title</title>
      <isbn>Book1ISBN</isbn>
   </book>
   <book type="fiction">
      <author>Book 2 author 1</author>
      <author>Book 2 author 2</author>
      <title>Book 2 title</title>
      <isbn>Book2ISBN</isbn>
   </book>
   <book type="technical">
      <author>Book 3 author 1</author>
      <author>Book 3 author 2</author>
      <author>Book 3 author 3</author>
      <title>Book 3 title</title>
      <isbn>Book3ISBN</isbn>
   </book>
</booklist>
';

my $t = XML::Twig->new(
    twig_handlers => { book => \&book },
);
$t->parse($str);

sub book {
    my ($t, $book) = @_;
    print $book->field('title'), ": ";
    print $book->att('type'), "\n";
}

__END__

Book 1 title: technical
Book 2 title: fiction
Book 3 title: technical
[download]