How can I read an XML look like file using perl's XML Simple? A file with non xml extention

Question

I know that XML Simple will read xml files but what if i have a .cfg or .txt file but in XML format? Can I read them using xml simple?

Thank you.

Edit: Thanks for the negative votes!!!!

use XML::Simple;
use Data::Dumper;

$file = "mytemp.txt";
my $config = XMLin("mytemp.txt");
print Dumper($config);

And this is what i got:

user ~]$ Extra content at the end of the document at /some path/SAX.pm line 64.

Answer 1

Yep. XML::Simple doesn't care about the file extension, only the content.

You can always just test it out yourself quickly:

# echo "<foo><test><helloWorld/></test></foo>" > foo.cfg
# perl -e 'use XML::Simple; use Data::Dumper; print Dumper(XMLin("foo.cfg"));'
$VAR1 = {
      'test' => {
                'helloWorld' => {}
              }
    };

Answer 2

As far as I can tell from the source of XML::Simple there's no validation on filename as long as it corresponds to a valid file. You can also create a file handle to read from your files and pass that to XML::Simple. So as long as you're able to open(my $fh, '<', 'yourfile.cfg') there's no problem.