Ignoring your attempts at using an XML parser as an XML generator, one is left with:

# XML::Smart
print $sXML->{book}[3]{title};

# XML::LibXML
print $root->find('book[4]/title');
[download]

# XML::Smart
my @books = $sXML->{book}('@');

# XML::LibXML
my @books = $root->findnodes('book');
[download]

So XML::LibXML is a little bit wordier, but there's a good reason for that. XML::Smart chose to sacrifice some critical functionality to offer its interface.

• XML::LibXML supports namespaces. XML::Smart doesn't (except when used to generate documents).

• XML::LibXML preserves the order of the children of elements. XML::Smart can't even list the children of an element.

• Comments are dropped.

• Only can only distinguish distinguish between elements and attributes when using XML::LibXML.

Either of the first three would make XML::Smart incapable of dealing with the most commonly used XML format (XHTML). The second means it's incapable of handling just about every XML format out there.

Update: Simplified an XML::Smart example that wasn't optimal.
Update: Added third and fourth bullet.

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