php-parser

I've used this idea to speed up AST parsing: https://github.com/z7zmey/php-parser/issues/21 By just reducing cost of doing allocations (but still allocating the same number of structs) on some of the hot paths it sped up making of the AST tree by 1.5x If you can use this approach for the entire parser I imagine the gains would be much more significant

> What is the purpose of this? Just static analysis? I'm not sure about the "Just" here. The opportunities for writing code transformation tools are abundant. E.g. a PHP IDE that isn't written in PHP, a linting tool, a preprocessor for an embedded DSL. It isn't obvious to me that the tooling for a language like PHP need to be written in PHP. > Why Go? Go isn't a bad choice for writing parts of a compiler. The parser itself was, however, written with the parser generator goyacc rather than native Go code: https://github.com/z7zmey/php-parser/blob/master/php7/php7.y Taking a goyacc file like this and porting it to another YACC is a lower effort than starting from scratch. In such a way, this project delivers not just "a PHP parser with xx% coverage in Go", but a shortcut to writing PHP parsers in any language with a decent YACC. One way thi