The version of the Function Parser library that ships with MOOSE contains a just in time (JIT) compilation feature that is not present in the upstream version.

Performance test results for the JIT compile FParser module

Include the JIT module (which also adds automatic differentiation support) with

#include "libmesh/fparser_ad.hh"


The module provides the class

FunctionParserADBase<Real>


which derives from

FunctionParserBase<Real>


bool JITCompile();

Calling this method on an FParser object will execute an attempt at - generating a small temporary C++ file with a function that performs the calculation of the parsed function - launching a compiler (the same compiler used to build libMesh) to compile the C++ file into a small dynamic library (.so file) - using dlopen() to immediately load the library file - using dlsym() to bind the compiled function to the FParser object
If all steps above succeed all further evaluations (calls to Eval()) of the FParser object will be redirected to the compiled function, which will yield a speedup of about an order of magnitude, depending on the complexity of the function.
All temporary files will be cleaned up and if JIT compilation succeeded the compiled library will be cached in a directory named .jitcache in the local directory. The name of the function file is constructed using a sha1 hash of the function byte code.
Compile times are around 100ms per function object. Once cached the JITCompile() call will return after about 1ms. Changing numeric constants in the function will usually not trigger a recompilation. The compiled function respects the current FParser Epsilon setting.
Almost all FParser opcodes are supported, except PCall and FCall`, which are function calls to other FParser objects and calls to custom functions.