High Performance Text Parsing Using Finite State Machines (FSM)

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In this article, I compare two parsing methods with a focus on their performance. The first method uses regular expressions for parsing and data extraction. The second method uses a Non-deterministic Finite Automata (NDFA) to parse text. The NDFA is a class of FSMs that can be used for any task that has distinct states of processing or operation. In practice, the algorithm has to follow every possible transition from a state to another and when a possible path fails it goes back and continues with another path.