If you are using a handler on the la elements, that will be called as soon as the end tag for the la element is parsed. At that point, the text after that element is not yet in the document tree, so there is no way to access it.

If your XML document isn't too large, then the easiest way to extract data from it is to parse it with no handlers, then find elements on it. This way, you have access to the whole document, including text after it.

If your document is too large for this, it's still worth to use as few handlers as possible. For example, use a single handler for whatever element represents a whole headword entry, and in this handler, iterate on the la elements in this element. When that handler is executed, the whole entry have already been parsed, including the text after the la element, so you can access it.

Thanks Ambrus, I thought that was the case but I wanted to make sure I hadn't overlooked anything.

As I said, this is a legacy script I have inherited. Luckily the particular form of data does not occur often, so the user has agreed it is not worth a major rewrite of the code to accomodate it. As it is, it means occassionaly the validation script will raise a few warnings where actually the data is OK, but we can live with that.

I have tried testing the parent node's text content as shown in my code but it does not seem to work

The code snippet you have posted does not demonstrate that problem, see How do I post a question effectively? and post a Short, Self Contained, Correct Example

Thanks

I think this is working as designed, la handler is called before its parent snot , before siblings are parsed and added to parent, so naturally next_sibling_text returns empty string until the parent snot handler is called

So the best and simples solution is to do this testing in a handler for the parent

#!/usr/bin/perl --

use strict;
use warnings;

use XML::Twig;

my $xml = <<'__XML__';
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
    <snot>the <la>snot</la> balls are made of snot
</snot>
    <snot>the <la>snot</la> bells are made of snot
</snot>
    <snot>the <la>snot</la> bowls are made of snot
</snot>
</root>
__XML__



#~ Handlers are triggered in fixed order, sorted by their type
#~ (xpath expressions first, then regexps, then level), then by
#~ whether they specify a full path (starting at the root element)
#~ or not, then by by number of steps in the expression , then
#~ number of predicates, then number of tests in predicates.
#~ Handlers where the last step does not specify a step
#~ ("foo/bar/*") are triggered after other XPath handlers. Finally
#~ "_all_" handlers are triggered last.

{
    my @snot;
    my $t = XML::Twig->new(
        twig_handlers => {
            'snot' => sub {
                warn $_->path, "\n";
                push @snot, $_->text;
                return !!1;
            },
## la , triggered before snot
            'la' => sub {
                warn $_->path, "\n";
                push @snot, [
                    $_->text ,
## doesn't contain next_sibling_text because not parsed yet, as expect
+ed
                    $_->parent->text ,
                ];
                return !!1;
            },
        },
    );
    $t->parse($xml);

    undef $t;
    use Data::Dumper();
    print Data::Dumper->new([ \@snot ])->Indent(1)->Dump;
}


__END__
/root/snot/la
/root/snot
/root/snot/la
/root/snot
/root/snot/la
/root/snot
$VAR1 = [
  [
    'snot',
    'the snot'
  ],
  'the snot balls are made of snot
',
  [
    'snot',
    'the snot'
  ],
  'the snot bells are made of snot
',
  [
    'snot',
    'the snot'
  ],
  'the snot bowls are made of snot
'
];
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