Thanks again. I will try that tomorrow. The rpm looks like it would be expat-devel-1.95.7-4.i386 .

I had noticed that processing small XML files was slow but I have had little experience with XML before. To get the best performance with XML::Simple should I deinstall XML::SAX v 0.12 and install XML::Parser 2.27 and the latest XML::SAX::Expat ( or leave XML::SAX v 0.12 in place?).

Sorry, but I don't have a picture (yet) of how all these components fit together - do you know of a good guide to perl/XML processing using CPAN modules?