Show HN: I vibed a better OCaml parser than Jane Street in 69 steps (opens in new tab)

(github.com)

3 pointsyevbar2mo ago1 comments

*for some cases

Using cloud sandboxes to run them in I tested: - A single coding agent just told to make a better parser - An agent told to write a better parser within the constraints of tests/benchmarks - An agent swarm that self-improved the premise with extra tests/benchmarks in order to more "truly" write a better parser

The results were a success! I was able to end up with both performance (up to 3.07× faster) and memory (up to 5.75× less) in locally runnable benchmarks.

1 comments

tsegratis2mo ago

i mean, well done

> using direct mutual recursion instead of array-stack machinery

the reason for array-stacks is using recursion can "blow the stack" i.e. has almost arbitrary failure on deeply nested pathological inputs

using recursion is going to be faster, to about the degree you bench, but there is a reason the parser you bench against doesn't use it!

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