[antlr-interest] attempt to compare antlr vs bison/flex performance

[Minas Hambardzumyan]

Hello,

In an effort to compare antlr and bison/flex parsers, I did the 
following exercise:

- found and compiled bison/flex "C" language parser from the following 
location:
    ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/net.sources/ansi.c.grammar.Z
- downloaded and compiled antlr3 implementation of "C" language parser 
from this directory in antlr3 examples:
   antlr/examples-v3/C/C
- preprocessed a "C" language file and stripped it such that both parser 
would pass it through (mostly minor changes)
- compared runtime for each parser


The results of this exercise show that the antlr parser is ~9 times 
slower than the flex/bison parser. I have used the same version of GNU C 
compiler for both parsers, with exact same compile options.

Although the grammar definitions come from different sources, I still 
think this exercise gives a general idea about performance differences 
of these parsers. Could anyone please tell me if this is an expected 
runtime difference or you think I could do some optimizations to get 
faster performance from antlr3.

I can send the complete code I used for both parsers, or any parts of 
it, if necessary. Just tell me which part would be of interest.

Thanks,
Minas