in reply to Jumping to a location in a file

kungfoo,monkee,
I honestly have not read beyond your 3rd paragraph and so the following may not be applicable.

XML::Twig is designed for processing huge XML documents. Also, the built-in perl function seek allows you to "jump" to any point in a file.

Cheers - L~R

Update: Welcome to perl and PerlMonks. I hope you stick around, it's a great language and a great place.