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Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:25:52 -0500
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To: Stanislav Malyshev <stas@zend.com>
CC: Marcus Boerger <helly@php.net>, internals@lists.php.net
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Replace the flex-based scanner with an re2c [1]
 based lexer
From: rasmus@lerdorf.com (Rasmus Lerdorf)

Stanislav Malyshev wrote:
> Hi!
>
>> be much easier, switching to re2c promises a much faster lexer. 
>> Actually,
>> without any specific re2c optimizations we already get around a 20% 
>> scanner
>
> I think 20% faster is very cool.
> However, as I understand re2c is not a standard tool found everywhere. 
> So what happens if you wanted to use it on some exotic system where 
> re2c is not readily available as manintainer-supported software? Also, 
> flex is available on Windows for example as part of cygwin, while I 
> don't see re2c there.
I don't think this part is a concern since we have required re2c for 
quite a while now to build many critical parts of PHP.  People who 
actually need to regenerate the parser files are the same people for 
whom it is trivial to figure out how to install re2c.  And yes, it would 
of course be good to use a released version of re2c, but I think by the 
time 5.3 is ready to go the version of re2c we need will be out there.  
Since it is Marcus' baby, he can just push it out, I don't think this is 
a stumbling block either.  Some of the new stuff in re2c was 
specifically added to make it easier to write a PHP parser, so I don't 
think backporting to an older version is really an option.

-Rasmus