my apologies...I thought that since the procXml sub worked just fine, it would not be relevant to the discussion or potential solution. Within the procXml sub, I simply slurp the file into a hash, then operate on the hash.

I was under the impression that because I was operating on the file contents in memory (i.e. the hash), it was a mostly CPU-bound process (minus slurping the input file and printing to the output file.

.I thought that since the procXml sub worked just fine, it would not be relevant to the discussion or potential solution.

You were mostly right. The only relevance it has is that nowhere in that code do I see any sign of locking (the keyword 'lock' does not appear), which means that multiple threads are writing to a shared hash and there is nothing to prevent them from corrupting data through collisions.

You may 'get away with it', but I wouldn't want to be responsible for when things go wrong.

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