<root>
  <node>
    text1a
    <child1>data</child1>
    <child2>data2</child2>
    text1b
  </node>
  <node>
    text2a
    <child1>blah</child1>
    text2b
  </node>
</root>
[download]

If that's a problem, find /root/node elements, then for each of those elements, find child::text().

Sorry, I don't have XML::LibXML here to test.

Thanks guys , managed to get it working now.

use XML::LibXML;

my $file = $ARGV[0];
print $file."\n";
&parse($file);

sub parse {
my $filename = shift;
my $parser = XML::LibXML->new();
my $doc    = $parser->parse_file("$filename");

  foreach my $node ($doc->findnodes('/root/node')) {
    print "textval :".$node->findnodes('./text()')->to_literal."\n";
  }
}
[download]

This does the trick. The particular data set I'm using should never have more than one text value mixed in with the child nodes.