water_solubility 0.00169 mg/mL at 25 C formal_charge -1 ChemAxon #### use XML::Twig::XPath; my $twig= XML::Twig::XPath->new(); $twig->parsefile('myfile.xml'); print $twig->findvalue ('/root/predicted_properties/property/kind[text()="formal_charge"]/ following-sibling::value'); #### -1