FAQ

General

Is it fast?

Yes, pretty much. Kaitai Struct is not a runtime interpreter, but a compiler — thus it imposes no additional runtime performance penalty. Code that it generates is about as fast as one can write in a particular language to parse a certain data format.

Is output of KS readable?

Yes, Kaitai Struct compiler generates very human-readable files, which can be examined with naked eye, debugged if needed, etc. For example, reading a two-byte signed little-endian integer is usually translated into something like:

field = _io.readS2Le();

How does it compare to ...

... GNU Bison, Yacc, Lex, Flex, etc?

All these tools actually work on parsing text (most usually, source code) using context-free grammars. The core problem they solve is ambiguity of whatever was read. For example, a single letter a might be part of string literal, part of an identifier, part of a tag name, etc. In most cases, parsers that they generate have state and

... SweetScape 010 Editor, Synalysis, Hexinator, Okteta, iBored?

All these tools are advanced hex editors with some sort of template language, which is actually pretty close to .ksy language. One major difference is that .ksy files, unlike per-editor templates, can be compiled right into parser source code in any supported language.

... Preon?

TODO