Check out XML::Twig:

use XML::Twig;

my $t= XML::Twig->new( twig_handlers => {
    'editor[@role="editor"]' => sub { print $_->text() },
});
$t->parsefile( 'yourfile.xml' );
[download]

I would agree with the suggestion to use XML::Twig. I use Perl to process XML data all the time and have found XML::Twig indispensable.

open 898642.xml ;
echo (//editor) ;
[download]

i tried extracting the "editor" for the specified xml file using the XPath tutorials as suggested.Im supposed to do it with XPATH only . cannot use TWIG. the xml file is

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE TEI.2 SYSTEM "tei-epidoc.dtd" >

<TEI.2 lang="eng" id="eAla001">

<teiHeader status="new" type="text">
<fileDesc>
    <titleStmt>
        <title type="main" level="m">1. Letter of Valerian and Gallien
+us</title>
        <editor role="editor">Joyce M. Reynolds</editor>
    </titleStmt>
    <publicationStmt>
        <date>2004</date>
    </publicationStmt>
    <sourceDesc default="NO">
        <p><!-- to be added --></p>
    </sourceDesc>
</fileDesc>

<profileDesc>
    <langUsage default="NO">
        <language id="eng">English</language>
        <language id="fre">French</language>
        <language id="ger">German</language>
        <language id="grc">Ancient Greek</language>
        <language id="gre">Modern Greek</language>
        <language id="ita">Italian</language>
        <language id="lat">Latin</language>
        <language id="spa">Spanish</language>
        <language id="tur">Turkish</language>
        </langUsage>
</profileDesc>



</body>
</text>

</TEI.2>
[download]

the perl xpath script i used is

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;

use XML::XPath;
use XML::XPath::XMLParser;
    
    my $xp = XML::XPath->new(filename => 'E:\xmlfiles\eAla001.xml');
    
    my $nodeset = $xp->find('//@editor role'); # find all editors
    
    foreach my $node ($nodeset->get_nodelist) {
        print XML::XPath::XMLParser::as_string($node), "\n\n"; }
[download]

Im getting this error

501 Protocol scheme 'e' is not supported e:/tei-epidoc.dtd
Handler couldn't resolve external entity at line 2, column 40, byte 80
error in processing external entity reference at line 2, column 40, by
+te 80:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE TEI.2 SYSTEM "tei-epidoc.dtd" >
=======================================^
<TEI.2 lang="eng" id="eAla224">
  <teiHeader status="new" type="text">
 at C:/Perl/lib/XML/Parser.pm line 187
[download]

please help me out :(

You didn't provide the file "tei-epidoc.dtd". I tried your program with that line removed from the xml and it complained about mismatched tags at "</body>". The xml isn't valid.

have a look at the Perlmonks tutorial I linked to above. The "moving up from simple to libXML" is pretty good and relevant to your problem. libXML has a faster and more up to date xpath implementation.