[Python-Dev] Re: [kbuild-devel] Re: CML2 compiler slowness

[Eric S. Raymond]

John Aycock <aycock@csc.UVic.CA>:
> The next version of SPARK uses some of my research work into Earley's
> algorithm and improves the speed quite dramatically.  It's not all
> ready to go yet, but I can send you my working version which will give
> you some idea of how fast it'll be for CML2.

I'd like to see it.

>                                             Also, I assume you're
> supplying a typestring() method to the parser class?  That speeds things
> up as well.

I supplied one.  The expression parser promptly dropped from 92% of
the total compiler run time to 87%, a whole 5% of improvement.

To paraphrase a famous line from E.E. "Doc" Smith, "I could eat a handful
of chad and *puke* a faster parser than that..."
-- 
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

[W]hat country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time that [the] people preserve the spirit of
resistance?  Let them take arms...The tree of liberty must be
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	-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Col. William S. Smith, 1787