doing XPath within shell scripts with a lightweight utility

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPath
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLStarlet
• http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libxml2 — Perl’s XML::LibXML (libxml2) is somehow the next alternative to try; it also comes with a command line utility: xmllint; “xmllint –shell” seems worth experimenting with a little
• https://sourceforge.net/projects/xidel/ (written in FreePascal/Lazarus)
• http://videlibri.sourceforge.net/xidel.html#downloads
• http://superuser.com/questions/324945/how-can-i-parse-an-xml-file-from-the-command-line-for-geektool – more suggestions

Is XMLStartlet really a reliable and lightweight command line utility to be employed with shell scripts? … with cygwin shell scripts?!?

cygwin and fink have each have (ipkg does not) a ready-made XMLStartlet, and for now it seems to do what I need.

cygwin (?), fink, and ipkg each have a ready-made libxml2 and xmllint.