Re: [boost] Re: Any interest for a parser class?

From: joel de guzman (djowel_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-01-17 07:01:50

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Vladimir Prus" :

> Dan Nuffer wrote:
> > rogeeff wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > First of all I would like to say that IMO it is odd even to discuss
> > > an ability to use Spirit for generic command line parser. It's like
> > > use a canon to kill a fly. For one It is very expensive and heavy and
> > > also I should drag it all over the place.
> >
> > That statement is completely false.
> > Please don't spread FUD about something with which you are not familiar.
> 
> I think you'll agree that concerns about code size, speed, and dependency on 
> other libraries are in general reasonable. It would help a lot, if instead of 
> one person expressing such concerns and another person stating that there's 
> no need to worry, you'll provide us with a table of grammars and code sizes 
> on various compilers. 

And compare it against what?

> joel de guzman wrote:
> > > It would be nice to have some numbers.  Joel, do the Spirit guys 
> > > working on command-line parsers have any size numbers they can share?
> > I'll ask... Judging from experience though, again, The code
> > generated by Spirit shouldn't be much more the size of a similar 
> > hand written one
> 
> Again, I'd like to see numbers. After bcc has converted
> 
> tuple<int, int> t(1, 2)
> 
> in 40 assembly instructions, I don't believe much in optimization 
> capabilities of compilers.

Sure one can hand-code something similar but it won't get a
fraction near the flexibility, ease of use and power of a true 
tuples library. Then sometime in the future, that same code
will compile to 5 assembly instructions and he is stuck
with his hand-coded workaround. As for me, I'd still use
tuples. 

Regards,
--Joel