https://metacpan.org/pod/Data::Edit::Xml provides a Perl centric means of editing data held in Xml format. Thus:
my $a = Data::Edit::Xml::new("");
say STDERR -p $a;
gives:
To cut out c under b but not under d:
$a x= sub {--$_ if $_ = [qw(c b a)]};
say STDERR -p $a;
gives:
I blog about Perl.