You don't seem to agree, but I really think that posting on PerlMonks comes with some responsibilities: as with every printed medium, you don't know who is going to read the posts (nor when), and you have no way to correct them if they think that index and substr are a proper way to process XML. Posting code with a bad design is no different from posting broken code. In fact I would think that it is even worse, as unsuspecting readers can try it out, see that it works and use it as a base for their own code.

These snippets are similar in a way to those countless attempts at parsing CGI parameters: this is just not the way to do it. Use CGI, use XML::Parser and its friends.

Just to show you the effect of your posts: imagine a good Perl programer browsing the snippets through the PMSI, looking for a way to get started with XML: this is what they get... I don't think you are doing him/her a service!

You can of course think different (of course you do ;--), but I thought it was important to add a correction after your snippet (and a -- vote).

As for the fact that you already posted a proper version of those tools... well, I just hadn't realized that podmaster is really crazyinsomniac in disguise ;--)