This option enables/disables the results cache in generated parsers.
Until now, it was always enabled, but after this commit it needs to be
enabled explicitly (i.e. the |cache| option default value is |false|).
The reason is that parsing without it is *much* faster according to the
benchmark.
Note that disabling the cache breaks the linear parsing time guarantee,
meaning that with some grammars you can get exponential parsing time
with respect to the input length. This, together with the possibility of
improving the cache performance in the future, is the reason to keep it
as an option.
Speed impact
------------
Before: 214.08 kB/s
After: 827.52 kB/s
Difference: 286.54%
Size impact
-----------
Before: 1045396 b
After: 949783 b
Difference: -9.15%
(Measured by /tools/impact with Node.js v0.6.6 on x86_64 GNU/Linux.)
This option makes the generated parser track line and column during
parsing. Tracked line and column are made available inside actions and
predicates as |line| and |column| variables.
Note that in actions these variables denote start position of the
action's expression while in predicates they denote the current
position. The slightly different behavior is motivated by expected
usage.
This simplifies the code a bit and makes the AST more regular (each node
type has a fixed set of properties). The latter may get useful later
when generalizing visitors.
This has two main benefits:
1. The knowledge about scoping params in at one designated place,
making all future adjustments in this area easier.
2. Action-related code does not handle sequences specially anymore.
Such knowledge/behavior doesn't belong there.