What is the fastest way to Parse a line in Delphi? - delphi

Question

I have a huge file that I must parse line by line. Speed is of the essence.
Example of a line:
Token-1 Here-is-the-Next-Token Last-Token-on-Line
^ ^
Current Position
Position after GetToken
GetToken is called, returning "Here-is-the-Next-Token" and sets the CurrentPosition to the position of the last character of the token so that it is ready for the next call to GetToken. Tokens are separated by one or more spaces.
Assume the file is already in a StringList in memory. It fits in memory easily, say 200 MB.
I am worried only about the execution time for the parsing. What code will produce the absolute fastest execution in Delphi (Pascal)?

Answer 1

Use PChar incrementing for speed of processing
If some tokens are not needed, only copy token data on demand
Copy PChar to local variable when actually scanning through characters
Keep source data in a single buffer unless you must handle line by line, and even then, consider handling line processing as a separate token in the lexer recognizer
Consider processing a byte array buffer that has come straight from the file, if you definitely know the encoding; if using Delphi 2009, use PAnsiChar instead of PChar, unless of course you know the encoding is UTF16-LE.
If you know that the only whitespace is going to be #32 (ASCII space), or a similarly limited set of characters, there may be some clever bit manipulation hacks that can let you process 4 bytes at a time using Integer scanning. I wouldn't expect big wins here though, and the code will be as clear as mud.
Here's a sample lexer that should be pretty efficient, but it assumes that all source data is in a single string. Reworking it to handle buffers is moderately tricky due to very long tokens.
type
TLexer = class
private
FData: string;
FTokenStart: PChar;
FCurrPos: PChar;
function GetCurrentToken: string;
public
constructor Create(const AData: string);
function GetNextToken: Boolean;
property CurrentToken: string read GetCurrentToken;
end;
{ TLexer }
constructor TLexer.Create(const AData: string);
begin
FData := AData;
FCurrPos := PChar(FData);
end;
function TLexer.GetCurrentToken: string;
begin
SetString(Result, FTokenStart, FCurrPos - FTokenStart);
end;
function TLexer.GetNextToken: Boolean;
var
cp: PChar;
begin
cp := FCurrPos; // copy to local to permit register allocation
// skip whitespace; this test could be converted to an unsigned int
// subtraction and compare for only a single branch
while (cp^ > #0) and (cp^ <= #32) do
Inc(cp);
// using null terminater for end of file
Result := cp^ <> #0;
if Result then
begin
FTokenStart := cp;
Inc(cp);
while cp^ > #32 do
Inc(cp);
end;
FCurrPos := cp;
end;

Answer 2

Here is a lame ass implementation of a very simple lexer. This might give you an idea.
Note the limitations of this example - no buffering involved, no Unicode (this is an excerpt from a Delphi 7 project). You would probably need those in a serious implementation.
{ Implements a simpe lexer class. }
unit Simplelexer;
interface
uses Classes, Sysutils, Types, dialogs;
type
ESimpleLexerFinished = class(Exception) end;
TProcTableProc = procedure of object;
// A very simple lexer that can handle numbers, words, symbols - no comment handling
TSimpleLexer = class(TObject)
private
FLineNo: Integer;
Run: Integer;
fOffset: Integer;
fRunOffset: Integer; // helper for fOffset
fTokenPos: Integer;
pSource: PChar;
fProcTable: array[#0..#255] of TProcTableProc;
fUseSimpleStrings: Boolean;
fIgnoreSpaces: Boolean;
procedure MakeMethodTables;
procedure IdentProc;
procedure NewLineProc;
procedure NullProc;
procedure NumberProc;
procedure SpaceProc;
procedure SymbolProc;
procedure UnknownProc;
public
constructor Create;
destructor Destroy; override;
procedure Feed(const S: string);
procedure Next;
function GetToken: string;
function GetLineNo: Integer;
function GetOffset: Integer;
property IgnoreSpaces: boolean read fIgnoreSpaces write fIgnoreSpaces;
property UseSimpleStrings: boolean read fUseSimpleStrings write fUseSimpleStrings;
end;
implementation
{ TSimpleLexer }
constructor TSimpleLexer.Create;
begin
makeMethodTables;
fUseSimpleStrings := false;
fIgnoreSpaces := false;
end;
destructor TSimpleLexer.Destroy;
begin
inherited;
end;
procedure TSimpleLexer.Feed(const S: string);
begin
Run := 0;
FLineNo := 1;
FOffset := 1;
pSource := PChar(S);
end;
procedure TSimpleLexer.Next;
begin
fTokenPos := Run;
foffset := Run - frunOffset + 1;
fProcTable[pSource[Run]];
end;
function TSimpleLexer.GetToken: string;
begin
SetString(Result, (pSource + fTokenPos), Run - fTokenPos);
end;
function TSimpleLexer.GetLineNo: Integer;
begin
Result := FLineNo;
end;
function TSimpleLexer.GetOffset: Integer;
begin
Result := foffset;
end;
procedure TSimpleLexer.MakeMethodTables;
var
I: Char;
begin
for I := #0 to #255 do
case I of
'#', '&', '}', '{', ':', ',', ']', '[', '*',
'^', ')', '(', ';', '/', '=', '-', '+', '#', '>', '<', '$',
'.', '"', #39:
fProcTable[I] := SymbolProc;
#13, #10: fProcTable[I] := NewLineProc;
'A'..'Z', 'a'..'z', '_': fProcTable[I] := IdentProc;
#0: fProcTable[I] := NullProc;
'0'..'9': fProcTable[I] := NumberProc;
#1..#9, #11, #12, #14..#32: fProcTable[I] := SpaceProc;
else
fProcTable[I] := UnknownProc;
end;
end;
procedure TSimpleLexer.UnknownProc;
begin
inc(run);
end;
procedure TSimpleLexer.SymbolProc;
begin
if fUseSimpleStrings then
begin
if pSource[run] = '"' then
begin
Inc(run);
while pSource[run] <> '"' do
begin
Inc(run);
if pSource[run] = #0 then
begin
NullProc;
end;
end;
end;
Inc(run);
end
else
inc(run);
end;
procedure TSimpleLexer.IdentProc;
begin
while pSource[Run] in ['_', 'A'..'Z', 'a'..'z', '0'..'9'] do
Inc(run);
end;
procedure TSimpleLexer.NumberProc;
begin
while pSource[run] in ['0'..'9'] do
inc(run);
end;
procedure TSimpleLexer.SpaceProc;
begin
while pSource[run] in [#1..#9, #11, #12, #14..#32] do
inc(run);
if fIgnoreSpaces then Next;
end;
procedure TSimpleLexer.NewLineProc;
begin
inc(FLineNo);
inc(run);
case pSource[run - 1] of
#13:
if pSource[run] = #10 then inc(run);
end;
foffset := 1;
fRunOffset := run;
end;
procedure TSimpleLexer.NullProc;
begin
raise ESimpleLexerFinished.Create('');
end;
end.

Answer 3

I made a lexical analyser based on a state engine (DFA). It works with a table and is pretty fast. But there are possible faster options.
It also depends on the language. A simple language can possibly have a smart algorithm.
The table is an array of records each containing 2 chars and 1 integer. For each token the lexer walks through the table, startting at position 0:
state := 0;
result := tkNoToken;
while (result = tkNoToken) do begin
if table[state].c1 > table[state].c2 then
result := table[state].value
else if (table[state].c1 <= c) and (c <= table[state].c2) then begin
c := GetNextChar();
state := table[state].value;
end else
Inc(state);
end;
It is simple and works like a charm.

Answer 4

If speed is of the essence, custom code is the answer. Check out the Windows API that will map your file into memory. You can then just use a pointer to the next character to do your tokens, marching through as required.
This is my code for doing a mapping:
procedure TMyReader.InitialiseMapping(szFilename : string);
var
// nError : DWORD;
bGood : boolean;
begin
bGood := False;
m_hFile := CreateFile(PChar(szFilename), GENERIC_READ, 0, nil, OPEN_EXISTING, 0, 0);
if m_hFile <> INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE then
begin
m_hMap := CreateFileMapping(m_hFile, nil, PAGE_READONLY, 0, 0, nil);
if m_hMap <> 0 then
begin
m_pMemory := MapViewOfFile(m_hMap, FILE_MAP_READ, 0, 0, 0);
if m_pMemory <> nil then
begin
htlArray := Pointer(Integer(m_pMemory) + m_dwDataPosition);
bGood := True;
end
else
begin
// nError := GetLastError;
end;
end;
end;
if not bGood then
raise Exception.Create('Unable to map token file into memory');
end;

Answer 5

I think the biggest bottleneck is always going to be getting the file into memory. Once you have it in memory (obviously not all of it at once, but I would work with buffers if I were you), the actual parsing should be insignificant.

Answer 6

This begs another question - How big?
Give us a clue like # of lines or # or Mb (Gb)?
Then we will know if it fits in memory, needs to be disk based etc.
At first pass I would use my WordList(S: String; AList: TStringlist);
then you can access each token as Alist[n]...
or sort them or whatever.

Answer 7

Speed will always be relative to what you are doing once it is parsed. A lexical parser by far is the fastest method of converting to tokens from a text stream regardless of size. TParser in the classes unit is a great place to start.
Personally its been a while since I needed to write a parser, but another more dated yet tried and true method would be to use LEX/YACC to build a grammar then have it convert the grammar into code you can use to perform your processing. DYacc is a Delphi version...not sure if it still compiles or not, but worth a look if you want to do things old school. The dragon book here would be of big help, if you can find a copy.

Answer 8

Rolling your own is the fastest way for sure. For more on this topic, you could see Synedit's source code which contains lexers (called highlighters in the project's context) for about any language on the market. I suggest you take one of those lexers as a base and modify for your own usage.

Answer 9

The fastest way to write the code would probably be to create a TStringList and assign each line in your text file to the CommaText property. By default, white space is a delimiter, so you will get one StringList item per token.
MyStringList.CommaText := s;
for i := 0 to MyStringList.Count - 1 do
begin
// process each token here
end;
You'll probably get better performance by parsing each line yourself, though.