Use setq rather than (set 'foo bar). Use push+nreverse rather than append. (xml-node-name, xml-node-attributes, xml-node-children): Use defsubst rather than macros. (xml-parse-region): Handle a nil return value from xml-parse-tag. (xml-parse-tag): Don't skip white space. Return nil for a comment. Concat the two strings surrounding a comment into a single string.