I use the following in a project (real path obscured):

    for my $pattern ($path->findnodes("thingy/something", $top)) {
        my $file = $path->findvalue('@file',   $pattern)->value;
        my $num  = $path->findvalue('@number', $pattern)->value;

        print "number is $num and file is $file\n";
    }
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If there's a better way, I'd like to know it. I find the XML::XPath to be a little awkward to use, but I think I'm missing something.