From XML to Comma separated format

# I use XML::Simple to put it into a hash:

Use XML::Simple
my $hash_ref= XMLin("$XmlConfigFile");
my %Config = undef;
%Config = %$hash_ref;

# Now I have a hash %Config that represents the structure of the XML file with keys and values.
# We can go though the keys and save it to one or multiple text files, separating values by commas or any other character.
# We have full control over the structure of the resulting text file.

normally i prefer xslt for such a task.
but if you insist using perl...please show a sample of your xml.

If the XML has got only a few types of tags(for eg., the whole XML file has got some 10 tags that are repeated thru out the document) then, it is better to use the regular expression.

It's hard to give a detailed answer without knowing the structure of your XML file, but you might be able to get some ideas from this:

#!/usr/bin/perl
                                                                               
use strict;
use warnings;
use XML::XPath;
                                                                               
my $xp = XML::XPath->new(ioref => \*DATA);
                                                                               
my $head;
foreach my $r ($xp->findnodes('//record')) {
  my @fields;
  my @head;
  foreach my $f ($r->findnodes('./*')) {
    push @fields, $f->findvalue('.');
    push @head, $f->getName unless $head;
  }
  unless ($head) {
    print join ',', map { qq("$_") } @head;
    print "\n";
    $head++;
  }
  print join ',', map { qq("$_") } @fields;
  print "\n";
}
                                                                               
__END__
<data>
  <record>
    <field1>foo</field1>
    <field2>bar</field2>
    <field3>baz</field3>
  </record>
  <record>
    <field1>foo</field1>
    <field2>bar</field2>
    <field3>baz</field3>
  </record>
</data>

yeah, you better write a shell script instead if using perl4