I'm not entirely sure here, but it sounds like what you're measuring is actually load-up time, while the parsing itself takes next to no time.

As far as seek time is concerned, the difference is neglible for few files but is going to grow in favour of the database as the number of your files grows beyond several thousand - unless you're using something like ReiserFS for the filesystem. The problem is that typical filesystems scan directories linearly to resolve a filename to the corresponding inode number. Other than that, no method wins very much over the other - you have to pick the files from somewhere off the disk and that means seeking.

Makeshifts last the longest.

In reply to Re: XML(::Simple) Parsing Efficiency by Aristotle
in thread XML(::Simple) Parsing Efficiency by billyak

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