Re: [groff] [patch] do not strip mdoc macros

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi jkl,

> > But sed, awk, perl, python, ... lex and parse once into an AST or
> > bytecode, removing the recurring cost of comments, etc. that impact
> > groff.  So I don't think it's an even comparison.
>
> Of course it's a valid comparison.  Which sed or awk or shell script
> is distributed in a stripped/compressed form?  Do they store their AST
> somewhere, so as to avoid recompilation?  They do not.  Just as with
> groff, every parse starts anew. 

It seems you're not aware that groff runs the source.  It doesn't have
an intermediate representation like those other commands I listed.
Thus every invocation of a macro, or iteration around a loop, reads each
character anew.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.