xmlParseChunk

xmlParseChunk is a function found in some XML parsing libraries, notably libxml2. It is designed for incremental or buffered parsing of XML documents. Instead of loading an entire XML file into memory at once, xmlParseChunk allows a program to feed portions of an XML document to the parser sequentially. This is particularly useful when dealing with very large XML files that might not fit into available memory, or when receiving XML data over a network stream where the complete document is not immediately available.

The function typically takes a pointer to a buffer containing a chunk of XML data and its size as arguments. It also requires a pointer to an internal parser context, which maintains the state of the parsing process across multiple calls. When xmlParseChunk is called, it processes the provided chunk, updating its internal state. If the chunk contains the end of the XML document, the function will signal that parsing is complete and return any resulting document tree or error. Subsequent calls to xmlParseChunk with more data will continue the parsing from where the previous call left off. This mechanism enables memory-efficient processing and asynchronous handling of XML data.