> IMO packrat parsing, while a powerful tool, should not be used to
> replace recursive descent, as it inherently has more overhead.  It
> should be saved for situations where a lot of lookahead is required and
> the non-packrat version (an Earley parser, say) would be n^3.

I want to switch to packrat because the code will be shorter, more
readable, and be less effort to write. Do you think the overhead will be
too much (e.g. a small server won't be able to serve enough clients, or
a DoS attack by exploiting this implementation detail will become easier)?