Is there any possibility to access nevertheless on both ways?

Yeah, forget XML::Simple, just stick with the DOM, and use xpath

See all the links in Re: Retrieve select information from HTML, the links they link , the parent nodes (for other details ), and you can use ->F or ->findnodes with these paths

## for each item
$ xmllint.exe --xpath " /config/item/destination_dir " config.xml
<destination_dir>test</destination_dir><destination_dir>test1</destina
+tion_dir><destination_dir>test2</destination_dir>

## first item only
$ xmllint.exe --xpath " /config/item[1]/destination_dir " config.xml
<destination_dir>test</destination_dir>


## item with filename 'bla'
$ xmllint.exe --xpath " /config/item[ filename='bla']/destination_dir 
+" config.xml
<destination_dir>test1</destination_dir>
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