XML::Simple for Perl Developers

An anonymous reader writes "XML has become pervasive in the computing world and is buried more and more deeply into modern applications and operating systems. It's imperative for the Perl programmer to develop a good understanding of how to use it. In a surprisingly large number of cases, you only need one tool to integrate XML into a Perl application, XML::Simple. This article tells you where to get it, how to use it, and where to go next."

Comments

XML??? Binary is faster!

[mrnick]

These comments are based on C++, though i have used Perl I have been doing much more C++ coding lately.

The XML files are text based. Text I/O has to be read in sequentially whereas you can write out an entire block of allocated memory to the disk in binary format. The advantages of this is that you can read & write that data to and from disk 50 to 100 times faster than reading it in sequential from a text file.

What advantages does XML provide at the expensive of data i/o speed loss?

Nick Powers