sub print_nodes { my @kids = @_; for my $id ( @nodes ) { print "Interesting data from node\n"; if ( @{$created{$id}{KIDS} ) { print_nodes( @{$created{$id}{KIDS}; } } } # Some work to make sure we start at the parents and move # our way down correctly. grep would work just as well. my @topnodes = (); for my $id ( keys %created ) { push @topnodes, $id unless ( defined( $created{$id}{PARENT} ) ); } print_nodes( @topnodes );