Element#matches() compiles the selector on every call #348

Element#matches(selectors) parses and compiles the selector again on every call. Code that tests many elements against the same few selectors (resolving a <style> sheet over an SVG chart, for example) spends most of its time in css-what's parser and css-select's compiler rather than in matching.

// npm i linkedom && node matches.mjs
import { parseHTML } from 'linkedom';

let svg = '<svg id="chart">';
for (let i = 0; i < 400; i++)
  svg += `<g class="node n${i % 7}"><rect class="box"></rect><g class="label"><text class="title"><tspan>${i}</tspan></text></g></g>`;
const { document } = parseHTML(`<!doctype html><html><body>${svg}</svg></body></html>`);

const selectors = [];
for (const a of ['#chart', '#chart .node', '#chart g.label', 'svg'])
  for (const b of ['rect', 'text', 'tspan', '.label', '.title', '.box', '.n3', 'g', '.cluster rect', '.edgeLabel', 'g.node', '.missing'])
    selectors.push(`${a} ${b}`);

const elements = [...document.querySelectorAll('svg, svg *')];
const t = performance.now();
for (const el of elements)
  for (const sel of selectors)
    el.matches(sel);
console.log(`${elements.length * selectors.length} calls: ${(performance.now() - t).toFixed(0)} ms`);

Node 22.17.0, macOS, median of runs:

A larger run (2,001 elements × 50 selectors, 300k calls), in ms per 100k calls: linkedom 0.18.13 158, main 111, with the compiled selector kept 17; happy-dom 21.0.3 10, jsdom 30.1.3 209.

A CPU profile of main shows css-what parseSelector/unescapeCSS, css-select compileToken/escapeRegex and GC on top; the matching itself is a small share.

Where: esm/shared/matches.js#L109 passes the selector string to CSSselect.is(), which calls compile(query, options) each time (css-select 7.0.0, dist/index.js, is). querySelector* and closest() compile once per call through prepareMatch, so it is matches() that pays per element.

Possible fix: keep the compiled function per selector string and document kind (xmlMode), in a small bounded Map; selectors with :scope keep compiling per call since their context is the element. I have this with a test (coverage unchanged) and can open a PR.