LibXML: Ghost attributes

Hello

I'm using LibXML to do some processing on a directory containing some 
highly structured dictionary data (some files have over 15k elements, and 
most elements have one or more attributes), outputting to another folder.

I'm finding that nodes from early files start creeping into files I 
process later (and possibly also the same file). This happens less often 
when I create a new parser for each file, but it's not resolved.

Specifically, I am adding new attributes to newly created elements in one 
file, and those attributes with those values are also appearing when I run 
the same process on another file. 

The full code is very long, but below are some relevant bits, edited for a 
little readability. It's also not particularly transparent what I'm doing 
unless you already know the structure of the dictionary well. Basically, 
the chunk I've isolated inserts a new element, <infs> into every <sense> 
within an <entry>, which has attributes @id and possibly @var, the first 
of which reads something like daily*adverb, the second is a comma 
separated list of all the variants. Thing is, I occasionally get things 
like <infs id="date back*verb" var="to judge by/from">...</infs> (in this 
case, I've processed jk.xml (containing variant "to judge by/from") before 
us_d.xml).

Is there any other housekeeping I should be doing once I get to the end of 
a file or while I'm working on it? Are the references to the senses 
colliding or something? Or is it something else more simple?

Apologies for any bad practices, I've only been using perl for 6 months or 
so. Indentation is a bit out, due to copy-pasting.

Daniel

#####
# The paths that are of interest are:
# epp/entry/posblock/gwblock/phraserec/phrase
#       the phrase that 'heads up' the phraserec
# epp/entry/posblock/gwblock/phraserec/var/v 
#       a variant form of that phrase
# epp/entry/posblock/gwblock/phraserec/sense
#       one 'sense' of a phrase (in this dictionary, each phrase has only 
one).
# epp/entry/posblock/gwblock/phraserec/sense/infs
#       not in the original data, but something I create in the course of 
the perl script.
# ... where epp is the root element.


my %sVariants; # each value, keyed to the sense element, is an array of 
strings; each string is a variant of the sense element.

sub proc_file($) # called on each xml file in a directory.
{
        my $file=shift;
        my $oNewParser = XML::LibXML->new;
        $oNewParser->keep_blanks(0);
        my $doc = $oNewParser->parse_file($file);
        my $eRoot = $doc->documentElement();

        foreach my $eSense ($eRoot->findnodes('.//sense'))
        {
                proc_sense($eSense);
        }
}


sub proc_sense($)
{
        my $eSense = shift;
        my $eEntry = get_anc($eSense, 'entry');
        my $isPhrase;
        my $eSW; 

        # I declare all my variables, I'm using strict, I'm sure I'll have 
missed something in the lines I've copied out, but strict is happy with my 
code.
        # eSense is the <sense> element, eEntry the entry element.
        # get_anc is a function which returns the first element going up 
the tree that is an ancestor of the first argument with the node name in 
the second argument

                # Some senses are inside a phrase record element. We add 
infs wherever this is true.
                if (defined ( get_anc($eSense, 'phraserec'))) 
                {
                        my $ePhraserec=get_anc($eSense, 'phraserec');
                        $eSW = ${[$ePhraserec->findnodes('./phrase')]}[0]; 
# there's only ever one of them
                        if (defined ($eSW)) # just in case
                        {
                                $sSW = strip_phrase($eSW); # strip_phrase 
reduces a phrase to text content and removes certain child elements
                                $isPhrase=1;
                        }
                        foreach ($ePhraserec->findnodes('./*/v')) # get 
all the variants in the phraserec
                        {
                                push @{$sVariants{$eSense}}, 
strip_phrase($_); # add the text in the variant to a list of them which is 
unique to this sense
                        }
                }
                # I also get variants from other paths in the xml, which I 
haven't repeated. But these other places are all within the same xml file, 
while some of the errors I get come from other xml files.

                my $eSWinfs = $eSense->addNewChild('', 'infs');

                        my $sVarList = "";
                        if (defined (${$sVariants{$eSense}}[0]))
                        {
                                $sVarList = join (',', 
@{$sVariants{$eSense}});
                        }

                        if ($sSW =~ m/\w/)
                        {
 $eSWinfs->setAttribute('id',"$sSW\*$sPosList"); # poslist is determined 
elsewhere within proc_sense, I've not copied out the code.
                                $eSWinfs->setAttribute('var',"$sVarList") 
if $sVarList; # offending attribute 
                                if ($isPhrase)
                                {
 $eSWinfs->setAttribute('id',"$sSW\*phrase");
                                }
                        }

}



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