diff --git a/src/Parser.php b/src/Parser.php
index 722c447e..5687d751 100644
--- a/src/Parser.php
+++ b/src/Parser.php
@@ -135,6 +135,21 @@ public function __construct() {
         $this->returnTypeDeclarationTokens = \array_merge([TokenKind::VoidReservedWord, TokenKind::NullReservedWord, TokenKind::FalseReservedWord, TokenKind::StaticKeyword], $this->parameterTypeDeclarationTokens);
     }
 
+    /**
+     * This method exists so that it can be overridden in subclasses.
+     * Any subclass must return a token stream that is equivalent to the contents in $fileContents for this to work properly.
+     *
+     * Possible reasons for applications to override the lexer:
+     *
+     * - Imitate token stream of a newer/older PHP version (e.g. T_FN is only available in php 7.4)
+     * - Reuse the result of token_get_all to create a Node again.
+     * - Reuse the result of token_get_all in a different library.
+     */
+    protected function makeLexer(string $fileContents): TokenStreamProviderInterface
+    {
+        return TokenStreamProviderFactory::GetTokenStreamProvider($fileContents);
+    }
+
     /**
      * Generates AST from source file contents. Returns an instance of SourceFileNode, which is always the top-most
      * Node-type of the tree.
@@ -143,7 +158,7 @@ public function __construct() {
      * @return SourceFileNode
      */
     public function parseSourceFile(string $fileContents, string $uri = null) : SourceFileNode {
-        $this->lexer = TokenStreamProviderFactory::GetTokenStreamProvider($fileContents);
+        $this->lexer = $this->makeLexer($fileContents);
 
         $this->reset();
 
diff --git a/src/PhpTokenizer.php b/src/PhpTokenizer.php
index 756cd159..1cc96754 100644
--- a/src/PhpTokenizer.php
+++ b/src/PhpTokenizer.php
@@ -74,7 +74,7 @@ public static function getTokensArrayFromContent(
             $content = $prefix . $content;
         }
 
-        $tokens = @\token_get_all($content);
+        $tokens = static::tokenGetAll($content, $parseContext);
 
         $arr = array();
         $fullStart = $start = $pos = $initialPos;
@@ -147,6 +147,22 @@ public static function getTokensArrayFromContent(
         return $arr;
     }
 
+    /**
+     * @param string $content the raw php code
+     * @param ?int $parseContext can be SourceElements when extracting doc comments.
+     *                           Having this available may be useful for subclasses to decide whether or not to post-process results, cache results, etc.
+     * @return array[]|string[] an array of tokens. When concatenated, these tokens must equal $content.
+     *
+     * This exists so that it can be overridden in subclasses, e.g. to cache the result of tokenizing entire files.
+     * Applications using tolerant-php-parser may often end up needing to use the token stream for other reasons that are hard to do in the resulting AST,
+     * such as iterating over T_COMMENTS, checking for inline html,
+     * looking up all tokens (including skipped tokens) on a given line, etc.
+     */
+    protected static function tokenGetAll(string $content, $parseContext): array
+    {
+        return @\token_get_all($content);
+    }
+
     const TOKEN_MAP = [
         T_CLASS_C => TokenKind::Name,
         T_DIR => TokenKind::Name,