xml.sax.xmlreader and expat

[Fredrik Lundh]

Gary Robinson wrote:

> We're using xml.sax.xmlreader in our app (http://www.goombah.com, which 
> is written in Python).
> 
> In Python 2.3.x, does that use the C-language expat under the hood?

yes.

> The reason I'm asking is because we're wondering if we can speed up the 
> parsing significantly.

if you want speed, you don't really want any of the xml.sax or xml.dom 
stuff.  I'm a bit biased, but I'd recommend the iterparse interface to 
cElementTree:

     http://effbot.org/zone/celementtree.htm
     http://effbot.org/zone/element-iterparse.htm

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