About Parsanol
Parsanol is a parser combinator library that brings together the best of two worlds: the elegant syntax of Ruby's Parslet and the blazing fast performance of Rust.
Why We Built Parsanol
We loved the Ruby syntax of Parslet. Its declarative approach to building parsers made complex parsing tasks feel natural and intuitive. However, when parsing large documents or processing high volumes of data, the performance of pure Ruby left something to be desired.
We wanted the best of both worlds: the beautiful, readable syntax that makes parser construction feel like composing music, combined with the raw speed that only a systems language like Rust can provide.
Thus, Parsanol was born. Implemented in Rust for maximum performance, with seamless Ruby bindings that let you write parsers in that same elegant Parslet-inspired style you know and love.
The Name "Parsanol"
The name "Parsanol" combines two elements:
- "Parse" — our core purpose
- "-anol" — the chemical suffix for alcohols (ethanol, methanol, etc.)
Why "-anol"? Because we built Parsanol in Rust. Rust is iron oxide—the product of oxidation. In organic chemistry, oxidation produces compounds with hydroxyl (-OH) groups, which characterize alcohols. So "-anol" is our chemistry-inspired nod to the language that powers Parsanol.
Like a well-crafted spirit, Parsanol distills the essence of parsing into something pure, powerful, and ready to use.
Our Logo
Our logo features a parsnip — the root vegetable — soaking in a golden life liquid. This imagery carries deep meaning:
- The Parsnip represents the parser itself — a tool that digs into text and extracts meaning from the depths
- The Life Liquid is the parsing engine, breathing life into the structure
- The Branches and Leaves growing from the parsnip represent the semantic parts that the parser extracts — each branch is a meaningful component of the parsed content
- The liquid nourishes these branches, showing how Parsanol doesn't just break down text — it reveals and organizes the semantic structure within
Just as a parsnip draws nutrients from the soil to grow, Parsanol draws structure from raw text to produce meaningful, organized data.
Performance
Parsanol is built on Rust, giving you 18-44x faster parsing performance compared to pure Ruby implementations. This makes it ideal for:
- Processing large documents or datasets
- Real-time parsing applications
- High-throughput API backends
- Compiler and interpreter development
Open Source
Parsanol is open source and available under the MIT license. We welcome contributions from the community!