parser has state?

[uriva]

I ran into some trouble using feed iteratively, then saw in the docs that it is meant for reading input in parts.

This means that if you want to parse multiple times you need to create a new parser object every time. Is that as intended?

[kach]

Yes, exactly. You need to instantiate a fresh parser to parse a fresh string.

[multimeric]

Do you think we should make a nicer API for people who want to parse many separate strings? For example a .reset() method that clears state so we don't have to make parser factories every time?

[tjvr]

Despite the name, the instantiation of Parser is intended to be cheap; you shouldn't worry about creating a fresh one each time. In particular, initialising the first column of the table is something that needs to be done afresh for each parse^*.

The only avoidable work that's done in the constructor is this line, making the Rules, but that will go away when I refactor Grammar into its own thing.

Ideally we'd rename it Parse, I suppose, but that seems awkward; and, well, backwards compatibility.

[* @Hardmath123: FWIW, I'm slightly lying here. Assuming the grammar doesn't change, you can preserve the first column. But you can do that yourself by rewind(0), if we add a rewind feature #165 .]