I have noticed a problem when trying to debug programs that use XML::Simple::XMLin. The program runs very quickly with regular perl, but with "perl -d" or "perl -d:ptkdb" the XMLin line is very slow, taking about 30 seconds even on simple input.

When I interrupt the call under "perl -d", I am always somewhere in utf8_heavy.pl. 

tf8::SWASHNEW(/opt/acs/perl/lib/perl5/5.8.0/utf8_heavy.pl:167):
167:                my $val = hex(defined $3 ? $3 : "");

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Also, I get the following message when using -d:ptkdb, at exit time: 
DESTROY created new reference to dead object 'utf8' during global dest
+ruction.

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Does anyone know of interactions between utf8 and the debugger that would cause slowdowns and reference problems? I am using perl 5.8.0. I have seen the same problem under Linux and Windows NT.

Here is some sample code to reproduce the problem: 

use strict;
use XML::Simple;

my $data;
{
   local $/;
   $data = <DATA>;
}
   
my $config = XMLin($data);
print "config read\n";

__DATA__
<config logdir="/var/log/foo/" debugfile="/tmp/foo.debug">
  <server name="sahara" osname="solaris" osversion="2.6">
    <address>10.0.0.101</address>
    <address>10.0.1.101</address>
  </server>
  <server name="gobi" osname="irix" osversion="6.5">
    <address>10.0.0.102</address>
  </server>
  <server name="kalahari" osname="linux" osversion="2.0.34">
    <address>10.0.0.103</address>
    <address>10.0.1.103</address>
  </server>
</config>

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In reply to XMLin slow in debug mode? by tall_man

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