See the layout of an XML document

$ xmlstarlet elements planets.xml

xml

xml/sol

xml/sol/planet

xml/sol/planet/name

xml/sol/planet/albedo

xml/sol/planet

xml/sol/planet/name

xml/sol/planet/albedo

xml/sol/planet

xml/sol/planet/name

xml/sol/planet/albedo

See content of the planet node

$ xmlstarlet select -t --value-of '/xml/sol/planet' planets.xml

Mercury

0.11

Venus

0.7

Terra

0.39

Get the third instance of the planet node

$ xmlstarlet select -t --value-of '/xml/sol/planet[3]' planets.xml

Terra

0.39

Get only the planets with an albedo greater than 0.25

$ xmlstarlet select -t --value-of '/xml/sol/planet[albedo > 0.25]' planets.xml

Venus

0.7

Terra

0.39

Get only the planets closer to Sol than the third planet

$ xmlstarlet select -t --value-of '/xml/sol/planet[position() < 3]' planets.xml

Mercury

0.11

Venus

0.7

Learn more XPath functions at Mozilla Developer Network.

Download xmlstarlet from xmlstarlet.sourceforge.net.