Benchmark: timing 5000 iterations of Dumper, DumperX, base64nfreeze, freeze, nfreeze, xmlDumper...
    Dumper: 102 wallclock secs (65.65 usr +  0.13 sys = 65.78 CPU)
   DumperX: 34 wallclock secs (20.38 usr +  0.04 sys = 20.42 CPU)
base64nfreeze:  5 wallclock secs ( 3.29 usr +  0.00 sys =  3.29 CPU)
    freeze:  5 wallclock secs ( 3.16 usr +  0.00 sys =  3.16 CPU)
   nfreeze:  5 wallclock secs ( 3.04 usr +  0.00 sys =  3.04 CPU)
 xmlDumper: 188 wallclock secs (116.78 usr +  0.24 sys = 117.02 CPU)

##</code><code>##

use Benchmark;
use Data::Dumper qw(Dumper DumperX);
use Storable qw(freeze nfreeze thaw);
use MIME::Base64;
use XML::Dumper;
use XML::Parser;

my $object = { # some complex data structure here
};
timethese(5000,{
        'Dumper' => sub {
                my $string = Dumper($object);
                my $obj = eval($string);
        },
        'DumperX' => sub {
                my $string = DumperX($object);
                my $obj = eval($string);
        },
        'freeze' => sub {
                my $string = freeze($object);
                my $obj = thaw($string);
        },
        'nfreeze' => sub {
                my $string = nfreeze($object);
                my $obj = thaw($string);
        },
        'base64nfreeze' => sub {
                my $string = encode_base64(nfreeze($object));
                my $obj = thaw(decode_base64($string));
        },
        'xmlDumper' => sub {
                my $string = XML::Dumper->pl2xml($object);
                my $tree = $xmlParser->parse($string);
                my $obj = XML::Dumper->xml2pl($tree);
        },
});