It looks like, overall, this design gets the parser about twice as fast as a simple one that creates tree-like ASTs.
That's not nothing. But a parser is rarely the most time-intensive part of a production compiler. And the parser does get iterated on a lot in languages that are evolving and adding new syntax.
Given that, I'd be inclined to take the performance hit and stick with a simpler AST representation if that yields a more hackable, maintainable compiler front end.
That's not nothing. But a parser is rarely the most time-intensive part of a production compiler. And the parser does get iterated on a lot in languages that are evolving and adding new syntax.
Given that, I'd be inclined to take the performance hit and stick with a simpler AST representation if that yields a more hackable, maintainable compiler front end.