multiple xpaths

[David]

I am writing a cocoon transformer and need to know when any of multiple 
xpaths match. I'm sure there must be a be a more efficient way then 
converting it to a DOM document and then running each xpath to get the 
nodelist of each.

What is the best way to do this?
Thanks,
David

PS. Sorry for the "repost". I posted this in the user group before but 
am hoping I will get a good response from you dev experts.