XML in Ruby (or C++?)

[Joao Barros]

Dear Ruby users,

I am (still) ignorant about Ruby, but, from the very few things I
read, it seems a very nice language. I would like to know some
opinions regarding Ruby's suitability to parse XML files into an
internal Ruby representation so that they can be manipulated by Ruby
code and then written down to a new XML file.
Is it a good idea to do it in Ruby? What about efficiency? Should I do
it with C++ (with lots of templates ;-|) ? I already know quite a bit
(?) of C++ and that is the reason why I am also considering it.

Thanks a lot in advance for any opinions. I need them!

Joao

 

[Brian Candler]

I am (still) ignorant about Ruby, but, from the very few things I
read, it seems a very nice language. I would like to know some
opinions regarding Ruby's suitability to parse XML files into an
internal Ruby representation so that they can be manipulated by Ruby
code and then written down to a new XML file.
Is it a good idea to do it in Ruby? What about efficiency? Should I do
it with C++ (with lots of templates ;-|) ? I already know quite a bit
(?) of C++ and that is the reason why I am also considering it.

Thanks a lot in advance for any opinions. I need them!

There are several XML parsing libraries for Ruby; the one which seems most
popular (and has been integrated into Ruby-1.8.0, which should be finally
released in the next day or so) is called REXML.

I think you should try it - it will be about 100 times easier than writing
the equivalent C++ code

Speed is something you'll have to try out for your application. If you are
parsing multi-megabyte XML files it might be an issue, but in the
applications I use it it's not a problem at all.

Regards,

Brian.