== Quote from div0 (d...@users.sourceforge.net)'s article > On 19/06/2010 20:39, Ben Hanson wrote: > > From memory (Joel did a PDF recently, but that is on my works machine) > > Joel has > > been developing Spirit for over ten years. The latest version is pretty > > sophisticated and has all kinds of clever stuff for directly parsing data in > > structures all inline etc. Needless to say, I find the whole thing pretty > > mind > > boggling. The biggest problem (as far as I can see as an observer) is the > > compile times. This is where D could be really interesting overall (Hartmut > > has > > certainly got his eye on it and in fact I'm sure all the Boost people do). > I ported most of the classic version of spirit to d a while back. > I've recently written a XML parser using it and it takes nearly 7 whole > seconds to compile with DMD, which is a vast amount of time compared to > rest of the stuff I compile. :) > The most trivial spirit parser in c++ takes over 30 seconds on my > machine, even with everything in the pre compiled header. D is just a > massive win for productively.
Faster compile time code generation is a massive advantage for D. Hartmut contacted me about a runtime LALR parser generator called Sweet Parser (http://www.sweetsoftware.co.nz/parser_overview.php). They've contacted the author about integrating a version of that into Spirit. A version in D that could run at compile time would be cool too... Bizzare timing or what! It looks like interesting times lie ahead... Regards, Ben
