Long compilation times #4
Description
Compiling relatively short files might take several minutes. Using the compiler's profiling tool, we can verify that compiling a 400-line program took more than 1 minute.
It is clear that lexical analysis is a considerable bottleneck. PMax's lexer is built with SwiftLex, which is convenient because it is correct and easy to use. It does, however, not produce very fast lexers.
Since 99,8% of the compilation time is spent in lexical analysis, the auto-generated SwiftLex lexer has to be replaced. This will happen when the language becomes stable (in the lexical sense), since writing a lexer is relatively time-consuming compared to using SwiftLex.