[antlr-interest] Performance Issues

[Peggy Fieland]

Our performance issues are surely not the same as
yours; however, we ended up with a big win by
statically initializing the literal table.

Peggy

--- Bryan Ewbank <ewbank at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've been having some discussions with the "powers
> that be" where I
> work regarding whether ANTLR is up to the task we
> have set before it. 
> We have it working (lex scanner; ANTLR parser,
> multiple tree parsers,
> C++/linux), but the performance is pretty bad (~3
> seconds to clone the
> AST for a 10K line input file for a C-like
> language).  A first quick
> glance at gprof doesn't show any obvious outliers or
> idiocies;
> however, I know there's more to be done with
> profiling.
> 
> I got the impression, several times, that people
> were pleased with the
> thruput of ANTLR for parsing and tree
> transformations.  Yes, there are
> a few "classic" tunings required - I'm working thru
> the information
> from this list over the past few yearse - but
> still...
> 
> Our productivity is certainly higher with ANTLR,
> particularly for the
> tree-parsers; however, if customer perceived thruput
> is "bad"
> (whatever that means, right :-), it's a serious
> problem.
> 
> So, has anyone been holding out on tunings,
> optimizations, and
> outright tricks that they are using to get ANTLR to
> eat trees faster? 
> Again, I'm in the C++ world, so java suggestions
> don't help.
> 
> Thanks from a harried ANTLRite,
> - Bryan Ewbank
>