I very strongly recommend against XML::Simple! A good replacement for reading XML is XML::Rules, its output is much more customizable. Update: If you want func to be an arrayref, just replace 'as is' by 'as array'.
use warnings;
use strict;
use XML::Rules;
use Data::Dump;
my $parser = XML::Rules->new(
stripspaces => 3|4,
rules => [
root=>'pass',
config=>'', build=>'',
ref=>'by name', func=>'as is',
_default => sub { die "Unknown tag $_[0]" }
] );
my $data = $parser->parse(<<'END_XML');
<root>
<config>
<build host="https://cpzdomain.local"/>
</config>
<ref name="abc_sia_%version1.ref%">
<func envname = "test01" objectdir = "/home/pv66"
base="default_771"/>
</ref>
</root>
END_XML
dd $data;
__END__
{
"abc_sia_%version1.ref%" => {
func => { base => "default_771", envname => "test01",
objectdir => "/home/pv66" },
},
}