Hi, for chrono input I'm using a scan_keyword function that adapted from libc++ library (you can find the code in[1]). Next follows the interface: // scan_keyword // Scans [b, e) until a match is found in the basic_strings range // [kb, ke) or until it can be shown that there is no match in [kb, ke). // b will be incremented (visibly), consuming CharT until a match is found // or proved to not exist. A keyword may be "", in which will match anything. // If one keyword is a prefix of another, and the next CharT in the input // might match another keyword, the algorithm will attempt to find the longest // matching keyword. If the longer matching keyword ends up not matching, then // no keyword match is found. If no keyword match is found, ke is returned // and failbit is set in err. // Else an iterator pointing to the matching keyword is found. If more than // one keyword matches, an iterator to the first matching keyword is returned. // If on exit b == e, eofbit is set in err. // Examples: // Keywords: "a", "abb" // If the input is "a", the first keyword matches and eofbit is set. // If the input is "abc", no match is found and "ab" are consumed. template <class InputIterator, class ForwardIterator> ForwardIterator scan_keyword(InputIterator& b, InputIterator e, ForwardIterator kb, ForwardIterator ke, std::ios_base::iostate& err ); What is the better way to do that (or something similar) with Spirit/Lexer? Can we hope that the Spirit solution could perform much better? What about if the strings to parse are know at compile-time? [1] https://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/trunk/boost/chrono/detail/scan_keyword.hpp Best, Vicente