Thanks for the references - persuing them now. (I have no idea what SAX is in this context yet - but hopefully I will soon:)

With respect to:

What is XML::Lite BTW, I have never hear of that module?

Sorry! The module name should have been XML::Parser::Lite

If anyone with editorial powers is reading this could they correct that for me as I appear not to be able to...by design I think!

XML::Parser::Lite is designed to parse SOAP messages, which encompass only a subset of XML, so I would definitely not use it as a generic parser. XML::SAX::PurePerl is a generic XML parser written entirely in Perl.It is quite slow but this probably doesn't matter for you. And if you use XML::SAX you can always replace it later by a faster parser.

BTW SAX is a standard api for processing XML in stream mode:it looks a bit like XML::Parser's basic api but is more recent and more powerful, especially when it comes to namespace processing (which you probably don't need right now). The most important features of SAX are that as it is standard you can swap parsers, go from a Perl one to a C one (like XML::libXML) or even use a parser that generates SAX calls from a non-XML source, such as Excel stylesheets (XML::SAXDriver::Excel) or CSV (XML::SAXDriver::CSV).

IIRC XML::Parser::Lite is XML parser which supports subset of XML::Parser's API. Another difference is that XML::Parser::Lite is pure Perl module and XML::Parser is XS module which uses C library expat. Normally there is no reason to choose XML::Parser::Lite over XML::Parser since former is much faster and offers more capabilities. The only reason to use XML::Parser::Lite is that you have problems compiling XML::Parser on your platform.

--
Ilya Martynov (http://martynov.org/)