Can parser combinators be made efficient?

Question

Around 6 years ago, I benchmarked my own parser combinators in OCaml and found that they were ~5× slower than the parser generators on offer at the time. I recently rev

Answer 1

I've come up with a Haskell solution that is 30× faster than the Haskell solution you posted (with my concocted test expression).

Major changes:

1. Change Parsec/String to Attoparsec/ByteString
2. In the fact function, change read & many1 digit to decimal
3. Made the chainl1 recursion strict (remove $! for the lazier version).

I tried to keep everything else you had as similar as possible.

import Control.Applicative
import Data.Attoparsec
import Data.Attoparsec.Char8
import qualified Data.ByteString.Char8 as B

expr :: Parser Int
expr = chainl1 term ((+) <$ char '+' <|> (-) <$ char '-')

term :: Parser Int
term = chainl1 fact ((*) <$ char '*' <|> div <$ char '/')

fact :: Parser Int
fact = decimal <|> char '(' *> expr <* char ')'

eval :: B.ByteString -> Int
eval = either (error . show) id . eitherResult . parse expr . B.filter (/= ' ')

chainl1 :: (Monad f, Alternative f) => f a -> f (a -> a -> a) -> f a
chainl1 p op = p >>= rest where
  rest x = do f <- op
              y <- p
              rest $! (f x y)
           <|> pure x

main :: IO ()
main = B.readFile "expr" >>= (print . eval)

I guess what I concluded from this is that the majority of the slowdown for the parser combinator was that it was sitting on an inefficient base, not that it was a parser combinator, per se.

I imagine with more time and profiling this could go faster, as I stopped when I went past the 25× mark.

I don't know if this would be faster than the precedence climbing parser ported to Haskell. Maybe that would be an interesting test?