Okay time to improve performances, gprof session:

before  real 0m2.483s (2.3.2 release yesterday)
current real 0m1.763s
when parsing (with tree build/freeing) db10000.xml from XSLTMark:
- xmlmemory.h HTMLparser.c HTMLtree.c entities.c parser.c
  xpath.c xpointer.c tree.c uri.c valid.c xinclude.c xmlIO.c:
  avoiding memcpy in production builds MEM_CLEANUP macro use
- parser.[ch] parserInternals.c: optimizations of the tightest
  internal loops inside the parser. Better checking of I/O
  flushing/loading conditions
- xmllint.c : added --timing
Daniel

include/libxml/parser.h

@@ -44,6 +44,7 @@ struct _xmlParserInput {
     const char *directory;            /* the directory/base of teh file */
     const xmlChar *base;              /* Base of the array to parse */
     const xmlChar *cur;               /* Current char being parsed */
+    const xmlChar *end;               /* end of the arry to parse */
     int length;                       /* length if known */
     int line;                         /* Current line */
     int col;                          /* Current column */