Parsing text is typically difficult. As a programmer you have tools ranging from String#split (convenient and fast but inflexible) to Lex/Yacc/Antlr (fast and flexible but inconvenient) and parser combinators (convenient, flexible but very slow!)
This talk introduces FastParse, a parser-combinator library for the Scala programming language, that aims to find a middle ground between all these alternatives. Convenient, flexible and fast, I'll show how code using FastParse looks almost the same as code using the in-built parser-combinators, but comes with an 85x (8500%!) speedup at run-time. I'll talk about how FastParse provides unprecedentedly good, structured error reporting for you to use to debug your parser (or help your users debug their input) and finish off with some demo live-coding of a language of the audience's choice.
Presented at the SF Scala Meetup 13 Oct 2015. Slides available at
docs.google.com/presentation/d/12KBSGSPj9jx3JeIkCrb-O8JwhkeJotM7J2EwWVRvqcI/edit?usp=slides_home
For more talks that I've given, take a look at lihaoyi.github.io/post/TalksIveGiven.html
