One last question, what is the syntax to get the children of children?

I.E.

The children of rra and or their children cdp_prep or database
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There is no level2_children method, but you might be able to use descendants, or just use a map. Note that you can use a regexp (which will be applied to the element name) as a condition. I am sure there are other ways as well, the condition can be a code ref for example, so you could test exactly what you want in there.

Anyway, here is some example code:

#!/usr/bin/perl -lw
use strict;

use XML::Twig;

my $t= XML::Twig->new( pretty_print => 'indented', error_context => 1)
                ->parse( \*DATA);
my $rra= $t->root;

{ print "results in document order:";
  my @results= map { $_, $_->children( qr/cdp_prep|database/) } $rra->
+children;
  print $_->id foreach (@results);
}

{ print "results by level then document order:";
  my @results= $rra->children;
  push @results, map { $_->children( qr/^(cdp_prep|database)$/) } @res
+ults;
  print $_->id foreach (@results);
}

{ # works only if cdp_prep and database elements can only be found as
  # grand-children of rra
  print "results using descendants:";
  print $_->id foreach ( $rra->children, 
                         $rra->descendants( qr/^(cdp_prep|database)$/)
                       );
}


__DATA__
<rra>
   <child id="child_01">
      <cdp_prep id="cdp_prep_01">content</cdp_prep>
      <database id="database_01">content</database>
      <other id="other_01">content</other>
      <cdp_prep id="cdp_prep_02">
        <other id="other_02">content</other>
      </cdp_prep>
   </child>
   <child id="child_02">
      <other id="other_03">content</other>
      <database id="database_02">content</database>
   </child>
   <child id="child_03">
     <other id="other_04"><other id="other_05">content</other></other>
   </child>
</rra>
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