If you want to extract just the values of a single tag or similarly trivial things or the XML is a very restricted set, regexes are just fine for parsing.
You’re not parsing XML at that point. You’re parsing a text based data format that looks superficially like XML. This can work if you strictly control the encoder but it’s not generally interoperable.
Why does general interoperability matter in the context of two devices that you control both interoperating? I mean, if I had written the software on the other end I would've used a different interchange format altogether. But when you constrain the problem down from your software connecting to any and all systems on the internet to your software connecting to a specific system for the purpose of exchanging well-defined messages, you don't need a general-purpose parser with validation. And you end up spending a lot of time validating and analyzing the same message over and over again even though you can guarantee that it's the same message.
If you want to extract strings from XML that arrives in a well-known format that meets certain expectations that may not be rigorous, then regexes can be fine.
Agreed. It's almost as odorous as xmldoc.toString.getBytes--which is definitely a thing some folks do--okay, welcome to encoding problems and busted documents.
