Directly-executable earley parsing

Abstract

Deterministic parsing techniques are typically used in favor of general parsing algorithms for efficiency reasons. However, general algorithms such as Earley’s method are more powerful and also easier for developers to use, because no seemingly arbitrary restrictions are placed on the grammar. We describe how to narrow the performance gap between general and deterministic parsers, constructing a directly- executable Earley parser that can reach speeds comparable to deterministic methods even on grammars for commonly-used programming languages.