The EPICS based control system of the ISAC Radioactive Beam Facility uses cppe, a host based sequencer. Cppe was adapted from a previous application and uses its own simple sequencing language. This paper describes CPPerl/CXML, a replacement for cppe, which was implemented as a Perl module on top of the EPIC CA Perl module. CPPerl/CXML retains important features of cppe, such as process variable declarations, connection checks and cleanup on abort. In addition it leverages the full capabilities of the Perl language and incorporates a state machine processor. Sequences can be executed either in Perl using the Perl procedural API or by defining a state machine using XML.