in reply to XML::Simple hangs

I get the same XML::Simple behavior as you. I got tired of waiting for the program to end and broke it. That put my machine into a wierd state and I was forced to reboot. (damn win2k).
I then wrote a little XML::SAX routine to see what was happening (see below). Doesn't XML::Simple and XML::SAX both use XML::Parser under the hood? Anyways, I appears that once it gets to the data element the character sub gets called once for each line of data, 76 chars, and then once again for each newline. This continues for some time, but it does finish with the data element containing 8786162 chars. 
use strict;
use warnings;
use XML::SAX;

my $h = Handler->new();
my $p = XML::SAX::ParserFactory->parser(Handler => $h)
    or die "Unable to get XML SAX parser object";
$p->parse_uri("10.xml");

BEGIN {
package Handler;

sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    bless({chars => ''}, ref $class || $class);
}

sub start_element {
    my ($this, $data) = @_;
    $this->{chars} = '';
    print "start $data->{Name}\n";
}

sub end_element {
    my ($this, $data) = @_;
    print "end $data->{Name} = ", length($this->{chars}), "\n";
    $this->{chars} = '';
}

sub characters  {
    my ($this, $data) = @_;
    my $chars = $data->{Data};
    $this->{chars} .= $chars;
    print "characters ",length($chars),"\n";
}
}

[download]
Here's a sample of the output... 
start assets
characters 1
characters 2
start media
characters 1
characters 4
start site
characters 4
end site = 4
characters 1
characters 4
start name
characters 15
end name = 15
characters 1
characters 4
start description
end description = 0
characters 1
characters 4
start priority
characters 1
end priority = 1
characters 1
characters 4
start publish_status
characters 1
end publish_status = 1
characters 1
characters 4
start active
characters 1
end active = 1
characters 1
characters 4
start source
characters 4
end source = 4
characters 1
characters 4
start uri
characters 58
end uri = 58
characters 1
characters 4
start cover_date
characters 35
end cover_date = 35
characters 1
characters 4
start category
characters 21
end category = 21
characters 1
characters 4
start output_channels
characters 1
characters 6
start output_channel
characters 8
end output_channel = 8
characters 1
characters 4
end output_channels = 5
characters 1
characters 4
start keywords
end keywords = 0
characters 1
characters 4
start contributors
end contributors = 0
characters 1
characters 4
start elements
characters 1
characters 6
start data
end data = 0
characters 1
characters 6
start data
characters 17
end data = 17
characters 1
characters 6
start data
end data = 0
characters 1
characters 6
start data
end data = 0
characters 1
characters 6
start data
end data = 0
characters 1
characters 6
start data
end data = 0
characters 1
characters 6
start data
end data = 0
characters 1
characters 6
start data
end data = 0
characters 1
characters 6
start data
end data = 0
characters 1
characters 6
start data
end data = 0
characters 1
characters 4
end elements = 5
characters 1
characters 4
start file
characters 1
characters 6
start name
characters 22
end name = 22
characters 1
characters 6
start size
characters 7
end size = 7
characters 1
characters 6
start data
characters 76
characters 1
characters 76
characters 1

... this repeats for a long time

characters 76
characters 1
characters 76
characters 1
end data = 8786162
characters 1
characters 4
end file = 5
characters 1
characters 2
end media = 3
characters 1
end assets = 1

[download]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom