Add a paramter to read a slice of the xml (row range or number of rows)

[abalter]

I have a huge XML file. Can't read it all in at once.

Brief description of the problem

This hangs:

x = read_xml("file.xml")
l = as_list(x)

Feature request

x = read_xml("file.xml", n_records=1000)
y = read_xml("file.xml", slice=c(1000, 2034))

[hadley]

I think this sort of interface is useful for rectangular data, but unfortunately I just don't see how it would apply to XML.

[abalter]

It was a naive suggestion predicated by knowing that my particular data is a list of records. I think the idea was "can I ask to read a representative subset of the data". In theory, that is not a valid question to ask with unstructured data. But, in practice, it often is.