std.d.lexer requirements

Walter Bright newshound2 at digitalmars.com
Thu Aug 2 11:06:39 PDT 2012


On 8/2/2012 4:47 AM, deadalnix wrote:
> Le 02/08/2012 10:13, Walter Bright a écrit :
>> As fast as the dmd one would be best.
>>
>
> That'd be great but . . .
>
> lexer really isn't the performance bottleneck of dmd (or any compiler of a non
> trivial language). Additionally, anybody that have touched dmd source code can
> agree that usability/maintainability isn't as its best.
>
> Sacrificing some perfs in a non bottleneck area to increase ease of use make
> perfect sense.

A lexer is like a device driver, or a memory allocator. Having it be as fast as 
possible pays off dividends endlessly for whoever uses it.

And in my profiling, lexing speed is a big factor in the debug build times.

The Digital Mars C++ compiler (and its antecedents) made a lot of hay by being 
the fastest compiler available by a wide margin. A big advantage D has is also 
compile speed.

Please do not underestimate its importance.


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