A perl5-native parser can be rigged up fairly easily, but it's *numbingly* slow compared to the C version. I mean, 20-50 times slower, by my guess. The speed issue when importing XML-like data (which we do *very frequently*) is a constant sticking point for us and our clients. Damian's Parse::RecDescent has been a godsend, implementation-wise -- but it of course suffers the same nasty speed issues.
I don't know that it makes a difference, as this is *really* a library issue rather than a language one, but there's a basic parrot XML parser in the parrot examples directory. It's faster (factor of four or so, though should speed up with our IO speedups) than the equivalent perl 5 version that it's a line-for-line translation of.
The performance numbers are old, it might be faster now.
--
Dan--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
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