<p>which one of the two is more spread? I want to read out the version number from <a href="http://freshmeat.net/projects-xml/mysql/mysql.xml?branch_id=46519" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://freshmeat.net/projects-xml/mysql/mysql.xml?branch_id=46519</a> but I want to use the one which more people have.</p>

<p>If you know another way to get the latest stable version number from mysql please tell me ;)</p>

For this kind of task, reading the document into a
```
DomDocument
```
and using
```
DomXPath
```
is probably more suitable.
To answer your question, both libraries (as well as
```
DomDocument
```
+
```
DomXPath
```
) are standard outfit with PHP5, so they would be equally fine choices.