Parsing strategy for tables?

[xoofx]

@jgm

As a matter of table syntax design: It would help a lot if there were an unambiguous signal (not requiring inline parsing) that the line was to be parsed as a table line. For example, we might require a | character at the beginning and end of the table row. Then the parser would know, ahead of time, that the line should be parsed as a table row. We could then set up a version of the inline parser that returns when it hits an unescaped | character. Without the signal of the leading |, we’d have to parse every line as inlines (or at least every line containing a |), and this would be inefficient.

It would, but markdown is more about making life easier for writers than for implementers!

In fact, in my parser, extensibility points are important, so adding a new inline parser is possible without hurting the performance (there is an early lookup for an opening character which is just a table lookup). So I will try processing the table at inline processing time instead of block time (and allowing the inline parser to change the block structure if necessary). I will get back here with some feedbacks.