Question

My XML file looks like this:

<A>
 <file>data1</file>
 <path>data2</path>
</A>

<B>
  <file>data3</file>
  <path>data4</path>
</B>

So I read the data from a log file, parse it and get tags like A, B, file and path. Right now I use a for loop to iterate over each outer tag, and then compare against each sub tag to see if the data exists in the XML file.

$data = $xml->XMLin("xmlfile");

foreach $e ( $data->{$outerTag} ) # outertag could be A, B
{
 if( $e->{file} eq $fname ) { do_something } else { return 0; }
 if( $e->{path} eq $pname ) { do_something } else { return 0; }
}

Is there a way whereby I don’t have to use the for loop.? Say I could do something like this (I am making this up):

if( $data->{$outerTag}->{$fname} ) { do_something } else { return 0; }

Answer 1

As long as XML::Simple has built a rational structure for your data you can write

if ( $data->{$outerTag}{file} eq $fname ) { ... }

but, depending on what you want to do with the data, you may well be better off using a better XML parser, like XML::LibXML.