The Language Parsing Library
Language Parsing Library is TIR's built-in parser combinator library, similar to
nom, winnow or chumsky. It is aimed at providin flexible yet performant
interfaces for any built-in DLS within TIR domain.
Rationale
One may wonder why not just use any of the existing libraries. There're a few reasons to take this road:
- Existing libraries are often too abstract and too hard to use. With too many customization points, they often become a burden when supporting multiple built-in DSLs. This includes things like error handling that is often lacking features required for mature language tooling. Rather then being a one stop shop for every parsing problem, we focus on things that matter for us: unified error handling and diagnostic engine, source tracking on by default, common sub-parsers.
- Lack of features. Surprisingly, generic parser combinators usually lack things that are actually needed for a real-world compiler or DSL, like comment parsing or usable support for separate lexing and parsing stages.
- Performance. Production compilers deal with huge amounts of data, and the hotspots can be in the most unexpected places. To have better control over our compile times, we need to make sure every part of the pipeline can be easily changed.