#!/usr/bin/perl --
use strict; use warnings;
use XML::LibXML;

my $doc = XML::LibXML->new()->parse_string(
    q{<?xml version='1.0' ?>
<roshambo xmlns="http://example.com/roshambo">
<sham>
<bo name="40" />
<bo name="2" />
</sham>
<sham xmlns:ftt="http://example.com/roshambo">
<ftt:bo name="forty" />
<ftt:bo name="two" />
</sham>
</roshambo>
}
);


for my $name ( $doc->findnodes( q{//*[local-name()="bo"]/@name} ) ) {
    printf "%-25s %s\n", $name->nodePath, $name->nodeValue;
}
print "\n\n";

for my $node ( $doc->findnodes( q{//*[name()="sham"]} ) ) {
    print "@{[ $node->nodePath ]}\n";
## any children    ## ./*
## any descendants ## .//*
## anywhere        ## //*
    for my $name ( $node->findnodes( q{./*[local-name()="bo"]/@name} )
+ ) {
        printf "%-25s %s\n", $name->nodePath, $name->nodeValue;
    }
    print "\n\n";
}

__END__
/*/*[1]/*[1]/@name        40
/*/*[1]/*[2]/@name        2
/*/*[2]/ftt:bo[1]/@name   forty
/*/*[2]/ftt:bo[2]/@name   two


/*/*[1]
/*/*[1]/*[1]/@name        40
/*/*[1]/*[2]/@name        2


/*/*[2]
/*/*[2]/ftt:bo[1]/@name   forty
/*/*[2]/ftt:bo[2]/@name   two
[download]

Awesome! Exactly what I needed.

I'm getting myself hopelessly confused with something similar. My XML looks like this:

<user>
        <address name="1">
                <entry name="Address line 1">street</entry>
                <entry name="Address line 2">suburb</entry>
                <entry name="Postal code">code</entry>
        </address>
        <address name="2">
                <entry name="Address line 1">street2</entry>
                <entry name="Address line 2">suburb2</entry>
                <entry name="Postal code">code2</entry>
        </address>
</user>
[download]

How can I retrieve suburb2 from that?

xpather.pl says

/*[ local-name() = "user"
    and position() = 1
  ]

/*[ local-name() = "address"
    and position() = 2
    and @name = "2"
  ]

/*[ local-name() = "entry"
    and @name = "Address line 2"
    and contains(string(), "suburb2")
  ]
[download]

So maybe you use

/*[ local-name() = "user"
  ]

/*[ local-name() = "address"
  ]

/*[ local-name() = "entry"
    and @name = "Address line 2"
  ]
[download]

or any number of things like that

//entry[  @name = "Address line 2" ]
[download]

Thanks, that's good to know. I haven't dealt with namespaces yet.

:) According to Re^2: Namespaced XML::LibXML XPath query (not a bug) you've been dealing with the null namespace -- ain't xml fun