According to the CREATING XML DATAsection, this is the expected behavior.

So something closer to what you are looking for is this:

use strict;
use XML::Smart;

my $job_name = "a job name";
my $desc = "a description";
my $desc2 = "another description";
my $num = "a number";

my $XML = XML::Smart->new();
$XML->{JOB}{NAME}[0] = $job_name;
$XML->{JOB}{DESC}[0] = $desc;
$XML->{JOB}{DESC}[1] = $desc2;
$XML->{JOB}{NUM}[0] = $num;

$XML->save('output.xml');
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Which produces:

<JOB NAME="a job name" NUM="a number">
  <DESC>a description</DESC>
  <DESC>another description</DESC>
</JOB>
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So the presence of multiple entries is what makes it a nested element. If this behavior is not what you desire, perhaps XML::Twig or XML::libXML would better work for you. I have got great results from libXML in the past. Update: I checked the tutorial and found what you're looking for.

$XML->{JOB}{DESC}= $desc;
$XML->{JOB}{DESC}->set_node(1) ;
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This code will nest the description as an element. Results:

<JOB NAME="a job name" NUM="a number">
  <DESC>a description</DESC>
</JOB>
[download]