From: slumos@...
Date: 2002-06-20T05:26:44+09:00
Subject: Re: REXML in C

"Radu M. =?iso-8859-1?b?T2JhZOM=?=" <whizkid@xnet.ro> writes:
> Hi,
> In the README file, Sean says that REXML is 'reasonably fast', so I 
> guess it's not as fast as it could be. So I was wondering: since C is so 
> portable, and creating Ruby extensions in C is most of the times pretty 
> trivial, why isn't REXML implemented (at least parts of it) that way? I 
> guess one of the reasons Sean would invoke would be that we'll lose 
> portability: is that so? It seems that many standard Ruby extensions are 
> built that whay, so why isn't REXML, too? At least, we could fork a new 
> project and try to implement speed critical parts of code in C, I assume 
> that would bring some serious performance improvements. Anyway, in a 
> month or so I'll have alot of spare time, so with Sean's help, I'll be 
> more than happy to try a C implementation of this great parser, while 
> keeping the excellent API the same. What do you say?
> Best wishes,
> Radu

I have to deal with really large (300,000 line) XML files, and REXML,
well, just doesn't work for me.  I really hate that since I really
like REXML.  My idea, which I sort-of-started-but-haven't-
had-time-to-really-work-on-yet, was to back the REXML API with
libxml2.  It has a fast parser and a fast XPath implementation, so I
think it could be very nice.  I'm very interested in helping any
project that makes REXML faster.

Steve