Impact of large yacc grammar on optimizations

I have a question about what C compiler optimizations get lost when
compiling an enormous piece of code.


For example, I have a large yacc grammar with a lot of actions, and
yacc produces a yyparse function that is 10626 lines, with a switch
statement that is 10204 lines long, and has 986 cases.


I have heard tell that certain optimizations will not be done by the
C compiler when dealing with such a large piece of code. Obviously, it
will differ from compiler to compiler, but I would like to get an idea
of what kind of optimizations go out the window.


I'm considering switching to PCCTS, which generates a function for each
rule in the grammar. I think that PCCTS is a much better tool to work
with than yacc, but for small grammars (~30-40 productions) yacc generates
faster parsers. However, as more productions and code are added to a yacc
grammar, there may be a performance degradation in the generated parser,
due to the large amount of code produced. I don't believe PCCTS would
suffer from this problem, because it produces a separate function for
each production.


Anyways, just to re-cap, I would like to get an idea of the optimizations
that may be lost or how performance is impacted with a large yacc grammar,
that produces code with features like those mentioned above.


Help/advice/suggestions very much appreciated,


Colm
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