Irrational Exuberance

You are writing a comment about XML::Twig for Large XML Files in Perl, here is a quick summary:

This week I needed to rewrite a Perl script that used XML::Simple for some XML handling. The cause? The script it needed to parse grew from 13k to 80 megs. All of the sudden the in memory approach wasn't looking so hot.

You are responding to this comment written by mirod on November 26th 2008, 02:08.

Nice explanation, and I am happy that you found the module useful.

I spotted a couple of places where you could simplify the code (maybe you didn't wander around the docs for long enough ;--), there is also more information on the module page

You can set the handlers directly in the twig_roots option:

  my $roots = { server => 1, proxy => 1 };
  my $handlers = { 'machines/server' => \&print_ip,
                   'machines/proxy'  => \&print_ip };
  my $twig = new XML::Twig(TwigRoots => $roots,
                           TwigHandlers => $handlers);

becomes

  my $handlers = { 'machines/server' => \&print_ip,
                   'machines/proxy'  => \&print_ip };
  my $twig= new XML::Twig(twig_roots => $handlers);

You can use the field (or first_child_text, but that's a lot of characters) method:

  my $ip = $ele->first_child('ip')->text;

becomes

  my $ip= $ele->field( 'ip');

I was also thinking that it might be useful to have an autoflush (and an autopurge) option, that would flush the twig after every root so you don't have to do it. It doesn't necessarily save a lot of typing, but it would be a nice, declarative way to express what you want to do with the XML. Would it make sense?

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