You have 60,000 queries, and they even search along the descendant axis (which tends to include lots of nodes). Why don't you extract all the "w" nodes out first, then search through those.

use strict;
use warnings;
use XML::LibXML;

my $file = $ARGV[0];

my $parser = XML::LibXML->new();
my $doc    = $parser->parse_file($file);
my $root   = $doc->documentElement();

for my $w_node (
    $root->findnodes('/e/p//w')
) {
    my ($wn_anchor) = $w_node->findnodes('a[@name="wn"]') or next;
    my ($l_anchor)  = $w_node->findnodes('a[@name="l"]' ) or next;

    ...
}
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Your original sorted the results by id. I didn't replicate that behaviour.
Your original ignored ids over 32812. I didn't replicate that behaviour.
Were you expecting more than one anchor with each name? I ignore all but the first.
Let me know if you want any of the above changed.

use a SAX parser and collect data while reading the XML only once. This could probably speed-up the process and reduce the mem usage and is a good hint if you are managing huge xml.

HTH

No idea about SAX, but I know in XPATH every time the loop performed the file is read into the memory so it would take long. and also I cant get all my "wn" and "l" attributes in an array since some of my w elements dont have the attribute "wn" ....

Some days ago I parsed a 500KB file with XML::XPATH and printed the resulting datastructure with print Dumper .. to a file. I was suprised, because it was 36MB big.

As alternative to XML::XPath, try XML::LibXML (XML::LibXML::XPathContext).

my $xp = XML::XPath->new(filename=>$file);
my $nodelist = $xp->find ('//w/a');

my %map;

while (my $node = $nodelist->shift) {
  my $key = join ':',
     $node->getParentNode->getAttribute ('id'),
     $node->getAttribute ('name')
  ;

  push @{ $map{$key} }, $node;
}

for my $n (1 .. 32812) {
  my @wns = @{ $map{$n . ':' . 'wn'} || []);
  my @ls = @{ $map{$n . ':' . 'l'} || []);
}
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nope, unfortunately did not work :(

it's still slow on your XML ? Then use XML::LibXML, it is quite faster then XML::XPath.

Your usage of the 'name' attribute in XHTML-ish data is misleading, names should be unique (and the name attribute is deprecated in XHTML). If you have any control over the data using the 'class' attribute would be cleaner.

Also XML::XPath is NOT a good module to use. It's slow and more importantly, it is not actively maintained. As mentioned above, XML::LibXML is a much better option, and the code will be very similar.

That said, here is a solution with XML::Twig that should be easy on the RAM (it purges the in-memory structure after each 'w' element). Note that the code is untested, because you did not give us sample data.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use XML::Twig;

{
my $file = $ARGV[0];

my $wns={}; # { <id> => [ <a text>, ... ], ... }
my $ls={};  # same 

XML::Twig->new( twig_handlers => { q{/e/p//w[@id]/a[@name="wn"]} => su
+b { add_value( @_, $wns); },
                                   q{/e/p//w[@id]/a[@name="l"]}  => su
+b { add_value( @_, $ls ); },
                                   # once you're done with a w element
+ you can get rid of it
                                   q{/e/p//w}               => sub { $
+_->flush; },
                                 },
              )
         ->parsefile( $file);


for my $n (1 .. 32812) {  
  next unless $ls->{$n} && $wns->{$n};
  print "@{$ls->{$n}}#@{$wns->{$n}}\n";
}

}

# get the id and then add the text of a in the proper array
sub add_value
  { my( $t, $a, $store)= @_;
    my $id= $a->parent->id;
    
    $store->{$id} ||= [];
    push @{$store->{$id}}, $a->text; # or xml_string if you want embed
+ded tags
  }
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Hello, I need a large xml file (about 2MB size) with queries for a research project. The thing is that I need real data with already existing queries that I can reference in my project. Please guide me where I can download them. Best, Ankit