• XML::SAX::ExpatXS - a SAX event generator wrapped around Expat, quite possibly a closer binding than XML::SAX::Expat - 1.02

Extra code is

$backend = 'XML::SAX::ExpatXS';
my $xml_x_s_exs;
{
    local $ENV{XML_SIMPLE_PREFERRED_PARSER} = $backend;

    $start = time();
    $xml_x_s_exs = $xs->XMLin($XMLFile);
    $end = time();
}

print_result($backend, $end, $start, $size);

...

is_deeply($xml_default, $xml_x_s_exs);
[download]

New results are

[le6303@itdevtst perl]$ ./xml.pl bigxml.xml
File bigxml.xml is 1730463 bytes
XML::Simple with default backend took 12.7477 seconds. This equates to
+ 135747.5992 kilobytes per second (1024 bytes per k)
XML::Simple with XML::Parser backend took 3.5870 seconds. This equates
+ to 482431.8874 kilobytes per second (1024 bytes per k)
XML::Simple with XML::SAX::Expat backend took 13.7021 seconds. This eq
+uates to 126292.1408 kilobytes per second (1024 bytes per k)
XML::Simple with XML::SAX::ExpatXS backend took 5.9447 seconds. This e
+quates to 291093.0139 kilobytes per second (1024 bytes per k)
XML::Simple with XML::LibXML::SAX backend took 6.5013 seconds. This eq
+uates to 266172.9123 kilobytes per second (1024 bytes per k)
ok 1
ok 2
ok 3
ok 4
1..4
[download]

So a good result, but the ol' original XML::Parser is still faster. ExpatXS may be a faster parser, but it may not be as effective as a SAX generator. More research is required - anyone, anyone...

I may get time on the weekend to try these with some more types of XML document e.g. one that references external entities (standalone="false"), large UUencoded binary blobs in CDATA sections, very small files etc