Another option is XML::GDOME, which, apart from a slightly outdated install process, seems to work well. And has XPath support out of the box. Again another case of the thin perl wrapper around the speedy C implementation. Doco is complete, but it doesnt hold anyones hand - if you know XML reasonably well, you should be fine - if your not familiar with the XML concepts, finding what you need can be difficult.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use XML::GDOME;
my $fname = '/path/to/your.xml';
my $doc = XML::GDOME->createDocFromURI($fname,GDOME_LOAD_SUBSTITUTE_EN
+TITIES); # or whatever gdome options float your boat
my @nodes = $doc->findnodes('/xpath/to/required/element');
foreach my $node (@nodes) {
if (needToUpdateAttribute($node)) {
my $attributeName = getRequiredAttrName(...);
my $newValue = getNewAttrValue(...);
$node->setAttribute($attributeName, $newValue);
}
}
...reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. - R P Feynmann