Extract information from CharData

what is the best solution to extract information from CharData using DOM (for example the list of vertices which is a float array)

i use something like this
istringstream iss;
iss.clear();
iss.str(dae_element->getCharData())
for (i=0; i<count; i++) {
iss >> value;
// do something with value
}

it works fine, just that it seems slow. I was wondering if there is a better solution!
Thank You,
Alex