Question

I need to use XmlDocument or HAP to parse several files, what is the fastest way to do it? I have an i7 processor, but the processor is using hardly 30% no matter how many threads I use. Each thread parses a different file.

Answer 1

System.Xml.Linq.XElement.Parse() is faster than XmlDocument.LoadXml() for parsing XML strings, and XElement.Load() will parse directly from a file. You may also find LINQ to XML much easier to use.

But if you want to work with XmlDocument, then you can use

XmlDocument xml = new XmlDocument();
xml.LoadXml(XElement.Load(someFileName).ToString(SaveOptions.DisableFormatting));

And as others suggested, you probably won’t hit 100% CPU utilization since the i7 may parse much faster than the hard disk can send data.