xml-dev - Re: expat question: processStream vs processFile/filemap

[James Clark <jjc@jclark.com>]

James K. Tauber wrote:
> 
> As I've mentioned before, I'm writing some documentation for expat and I'm
> currently doing a walkthrough of xmlwf. My lack of knowledge of C file I/O
> is letting me down.
> 
> Can somebody who has worked with the expat source (or who is at least
> willing to have a quick look at xmlwf.c) tell me what the difference is
> between using processStream and using processFile/filemap? Why is it a
> command-line option?
> Why would you pick one over the other?

Using file mapping is typically more efficient, but you might need to
use processStream if:

- your OS doesn't support file mapping (although xmlwf can fake it by
reading the entire file into memory)

- you don't want to deal with the portability problems that using file
mapping brings

- you have files larger than can be mapped (eg > 2Gb)

- you are reading from a network connection or pipe rather than a file

It's a command-line option for testing purposes.

James



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