I found a Stack Overflow question regarding adding XML::LibXML to an ActiveState distribution. It still requires the binary portions, but 3rd parties have made distributions and let you use the ActiveState ppm utility to get it installed.

As to your original question about the utility of XML::XPath, it's not bad with relatively simple XML. It doesn't handle name spaces, and if your XML gets very large the memory usage and processing time is going to explode. For a project I was working on, I remember having to modify the code of XML::XPath a little to fix a bug in retrieving attribute values. It isn't actively maintained and you'll eventually outstrip its capabilities. If you don't want to bother with XML::LibXML, you could also try XML::Twig which has XPath capabilities.

In reply to Re^2: preferred XPath library in perl by Sinistral
in thread preferred XPath library in perl by Pickwick

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.