[Python-Dev] Performance of various marshallers (original) (raw)

Skip Montanaro skip@pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Tue, 2 Oct 2001 13:57:25 -0500 

>> I suspect not.  It's special purpose is to parse or generate XML-RPC,
>> so you know ahead of time that the end result is the only thing you
>> need.

Paul> One reason to use a full XML parser is you get Unicode cheaply. I
Paul> don't see Unicode as a feature that you add in a weekend at the
Paul> end...

XML-RPC's relationship to Unicode is ill-defined. The spec that Dave Winer wrote requires all data to be US-ASCII, so XML-RPC isn't really XML-compliant. (You'll have to take up issues of standards compliance with Dave.)

Still, Unicode or not, the notion that XML-RPC is a data serialization mechanism instead of a compound data markup language means you don't need to provide hooks for processing each element, so full-blown XML parsers tend to be overkill as py-xmlrpc demonstrates. No matter how hard Shilad finds it to add Unicode support to his package, it's still likely to be miles ahead of other XML parsers.

Skip