# benjamin-hodgson/Pidgin

A lightweight and fast parsing library for C#.

Repository: https://github.com/benjamin-hodgson/Pidgin
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/pidgin
Homepage: https://www.benjamin.pizza/Pidgin/
Language: C#
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: parsing, dotnet, dotnet-core, csharp, parser-combinators, parse, parser
Last push: 2026-06-29T09:29:56+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 71/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 90, release rhythm 30, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3437, "days_push": 65, "days_rel": 306, "gap_med": 114.0, "n_releases_24m": 3}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1100, forks 74 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:35.385346+00:00)

## What it is
Pidgin is a lightweight, fast parser combinator library for C# and .NET. It lets developers declaratively build parsers for text or binary formats within general-purpose code, without external parser generator tools.

## Use cases
- parse a custom DSL or configuration language in C#
- build a parser for a programming or query language
- parse structured text where regex is not powerful enough
- parse binary file formats with typed token streams
- write declarative grammar specifications as executable C# code
- replace ANTLR with a simpler in-code parsing solution

## When to choose
- you need to parse context-free languages in .NET without external tooling
- you want parsers that read like grammar specifications in C#
- you need better error reporting and composability than regex provides
- you want a lightweight, fast alternative to parser generators like ANTLR

## When to avoid
- you only need simple regex-based matching
- you are not working on the .NET platform
- you need maximum parsing performance from a hand-written recursive descent parser
- your grammar is best expressed with a separate grammar file and code generation step

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: active
- function: parser
- domain: parsers, programming-languages, developer-tools
- platform: dotnet, cross-platform
- tags: parser-combinators, csharp, text-parsing, dsl

## Member repositories
- benjamin-hodgson/Pidgin (main) score 71

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:35.385346+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T06:45:46.835270+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/benjamin-hodgson/Pidgin (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:35.385346+00:00, sha 193812b84460)
  - homepage: https://www.benjamin.pizza/Pidgin/ (fetched 2026-08-29T12:48:50.151900+00:00, sha d93e54140baa)
  - site_page: https://www.benjamin.pizza/Pidgin/v3.5.0 (fetched 2026-08-29T12:48:50.161638+00:00, sha e565ca44cd94)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.