hard to see how this really faster (and less bug prone) than generating one with Ragel. Hm, I actually think the opposite (except for the point about bugs). A

hard to see how this really faster (and less bug prone) than generating one with Ragel. Hm, I actually think the opposite (except for the point about bugs). A hand-crafted parser can easily be faster than a generic parser because: * You aren't limited to implementing a regular grammar * You can guarantee no overhead is introduced by the parsing tool * You have complete freedom to optimize at the lowest levels Now, I've never used Ragel, so I'm speaking from my experience with other parser generators (and from the perspective of a programming language implementation). I'd be interested to know if Ragel is different with regard to any of these points.