Question

Here is a short XML file with 2 nodes having the same children (but with 2 different values).

5000 for the node MIAMI

7777 for the node WASHINGTON

<country id="USA">
<city id="MIAMI" method="modify">
    <attributes>
        <number_people>5000</number_people>
        <average_income>40</average_income>
    </attributes>
</city>

<city id="WASHINGTON" method="modify">
    <attributes>
        <number_people>7777</number_people>
        <average_income>40</average_income>

    </attributes>
 </city>
</country>

Using Perl::Twig, I want to check if the nodes MIAMI and WASHINGTON are IDENTICAL (having the same children and the same values).

Here is what I did which is not working
($M->children eq $W->children) is found to be TRUE.
It should be false since “number_people” value is different.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use warnings;
use XML::Twig;

my $t= XML::Twig->new;
my $v= XML::Twig::Elt->new;

$t-> parsefile ('file.xml');
my $M=$t->first_elt('city');            # retrieve node MIAMI 
my $W=$M->next_sibling('city');    # retrieve node WASHINGTON


if ($M->children eq $W->children) {print "the two nodes are exactly IDENTICAL"; } 

Answer 1

What’s about module Data::Compare, it help to compare two perl data structures recursively.

I check documentation for module XML::Twig you can get structure of any TWIG object using method simplify. So $M->children->simplify