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Parser Combinators Beat Regexes

(entropicthoughts.com)
120 points mooreds | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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o11c ◴[] No.43639374[source]
Note that most implementations of both parser combinators and regexes can fail very badly (exponential time). Never use either on untrusted input, unless you can prove your implementation lets you stay linear.
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giraffe_lady ◴[] No.43639552[source]
PEGs don't have this problem right? Linear time over length of input? Though I guess most peg libraries probably aren't "pure" pegs to get around its limitations and may reintroduce this issue?
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1. yen223 ◴[] No.43639629[source]
PEGs don't have this problem only because they place restrictions on the grammar.

In practice, this isn't a problem, but it does require you write grammar rules in a specific way (e.g. no left-recursion)