[SimpleParse] SimpleParse tag-table optimizations checked in...

[Mike C. F. <mcf...@ro...>]

Just a FYI: I have just checked in changes to the simpleparse engine 
which produce the same parsing tables with the following two grammars:

    a    := (table1 / table2 / any_line)*
    <any_line> := ANY*, EOL
    <ANY>      := -EOL
    <EOL>      := '\n'
    table1 := 'a'
    table2 := 'b'

vs.

    a    := (table1 / table2 / (-'\n'*, '\n'))*
    table1 := 'a'
    table2 := 'b'

Similarly:
    a:=b <b>:= -c* c:='this'
becomes:
    a := -'this'*

and

    a:=b >b<:= c c:= 'this'
becomes:
    a := c c:= 'this'

There are a number of other minor optimizations to the generated 
mxTextTools tables (primarily getting rid of spurious table/sub-table 
elements in some common areas).  If you are particularly interested, 
feel free to check out the code from the CVS repository.  I haven't done 
any empirical testing yet to see if the overall impact of the 
optimization calculations make this approach worthwhile, but I would 
imagine that, if the analysis stage isn't killing us entirely the parser 
should be somewhat faster, particularly on grammars which use lots of 
un-reporting or expanded productions.

Enjoy yourselves,
Mike

_______________________________________
  Mike C. Fletcher
  Designer, VR Plumber, Coder
  http://members.rogers.com/mcfletch/