By your use of of the word "words" I'm assuming you mean "does the XML document contain one or more elements with the tag name X for each name X in my list"

something like this would work: 

use strict;
use XML::Twig;

my @nodes = qw(title toc bar);

my %found;
my $t = XML::Twig->new(
    twig_handlers => { map { $_ => sub { $found{$_->name()}++ }; } @no
+des }
);

$t->parsefile(shift()); # read file specified at command line

$t->flush; # update: you may need this

for (@nodes) {
    die "$_ not found" unless $found{$_};
}

[download]
should be reasonably fast, too. For a possibly simpler (and probably slower) approach, you might want to look at the "descendants" method in XML::Twig.

"What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"

In reply to Re: XML::Twig - How do I check to see if an element exists in root? by Joost
in thread XML::Twig - How do I check to see if an element exists in root? by dbmathis

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