Use Data::Dumper to visualize complex data structures.
XML::Simple does not create new variables, it creates a reference. See Perl Data Structures Cookbook.
use Data::Dumper;
use XML::Simple;
my $x = XMLin(q(<r xmlns:xsd="xsd"><xsd:schema atr="a">a</xsd:schema></r>));
print Dumper $x;
print $x->{'xsd:schema'}{content};
Output:
$VAR1 = {
'xsd:schema' => {
'content' => 'a',
'atr' => 'a'
},
'xmlns:xsd' => 'xsd'
};
a