use strict;
use warnings;
use XML::Twig;

my $xmlStr = <<XML;
<foo>
    <qp>
        <q supp="yes">hello</q>
        <q supp="no">bye</q>
        <xr supp="yes">later</xr>
    </qp>
</foo>
XML

my $twig= XML::Twig->new();
$twig->parse($xmlStr);
my $elt = $twig->root();
my @qps = $elt->children('qp');
my $numOfQuotes = 0;
for my $qp (@qps) {
    for my $q ($qp->children( qr/^(q|xr)$/ )) {
        $numOfQuotes++ if $q->att('supp') eq 'yes';
    }
}
print "numOfQuotes = $numOfQuotes\n";

__END__

numOfQuotes = 2
[download]

Toolic

I have modified your suggestion (I needed the ones that weren't suppressed) as this seemed to cope with the added requirements for testing for other attributes and values. Thansk for this suggestion

My code is something like this:

my $numOfQuots = 0;
        if ( my @qps = $elt->children('qp') ) {
            foreach my $qp (@qps) {
                foreach my $q ($qp->children( qr/^(q|xr)$/ ) ) {
                $numOfQuots++ if (($q->att('supp') ne 'yes') 
                && ($q->att('info') ne 'yes') &&
                ($q->att('info') ne 'info') &&
                ($q->att('info') ne 'intro') &&
                ($q->att('style') ne 'IMPL'));
                }
            }
        }
[download]

It's hard to check without the data, but you could do $qp->children( 'q[@supp != "yes"]'). Actually if all you want is the number of such children, you can use the children_count method instead of taking scalar ( $qp->children....

$qp->children( 'q[@supp != "yes"]') worked great, thanks. I have just been told that as well as suppressed quotations the count should ignore information quotes, which are indicated by an attribute info="yes" on the <q> tag. How do you combine two conditions? Would $qp->children( 'q[@supp != "yes"][@info != "yes"]') work or is it done some other way?

No, only one predicate is accepted at the moment, so you would have to write: $qp->children( 'q[@supp != "yes" and @info != "yes"]').

I know you've said you use XML::Twig, but ... this solution has the additional advantage that it doesn't keep the whole parsed document in memory:

use strict;
use warnings;
no warnings 'uninitialized';
use XML::Rules;

my $xmlStr = <<XML;
<foo>
    <qp name="foo">
        <q supp="yes">hello</q>
        <q supp="no">bye</q>
        <xr supp="yes">later</xr>
    </qp>
    <qp name="bar">
        <q supp="yes">bye</q>
        <xr supp="no">later</xr>
        <xr supp="no">sometime</xr>
    </qp>
</foo>
XML

my $parser = XML::Rules->new(
    stripspaces => 7,
    rules => {
        'q,xr' => sub {
            return if $_[1]->{supp} eq 'yes' or $_[1]->{info} eq 'yes'
+;
            return '+count' => 1;
        },
        qp => sub {
            printf "Definition '%s' has %d quotations.\n", $_[1]->{nam
+e}, $_[1]->{count}+0;
            return '+total' => $_[1]->{count}+0;
        },
        foo => sub { return $_[1]->{total} },
        _default => '',
    },
);

my $total = $parser->parse($xmlStr);
print "The total count is $total\n";
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