As I intended to create for my own purpose a clean PHP class to act on XML files, combining the use of DOM and simplexml functions, I had that small problem, but very annoying, that the offsets in a path is not numbered the same in both. 
That is to say, for example, if i get a DOM xpath object it appears like:
/ANODE/ANOTHERNODE/SOMENODE[9]/NODE[2]
and as a simplexml object would be equivalent to:
ANODE->ANOTHERNODE->SOMENODE[8]->NODE[1]
So u see what I mean? I used preg_match_all to solve that problem, and finally I got this after some hours of headlock (as I'm french the names of variables are in French sorry), hoping it could be useful to some of you:
<?php
function decrease_string($string)
    {
        preg_match_all("/[0-9]+/",$chaine,$out,PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
            for($i=0;$i<sizeof($out[0]);$i++)
            {
                $longueurnombre = strlen((string)$out[0][$i][0]);
                $taillechaine = strlen($chaine);
                $debut = substr($chaine,0,$out[0][$i][1]);
                $milieu = ($out[0][$i][0])-1;
                $fin = substr($chaine,$out[0][$i][1]+$longueurnombre,$taillechaine);
                 if(preg_match('#[1][0]+$#', $out[0][$i][0]))
                 {
                    for($j = $i+1;$j<sizeof($out[0]);$j++)
                    {
                        $out[0][$j][1] = $out[0][$j][1] -1;
                    }
                 }
                $chaine = $debut.$milieu.$fin;
            }
        return $chaine;
    }
?>