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Concept
Lex (software)
Summary
Lex is a computer program that generates lexical analyzers ("scanners" or "lexers").
Lex is commonly used with the yacc parser generator. Lex, originally written by Mike Lesk and Eric Schmidt and described in 1975, is the standard lexical analyzer generator on many Unix systems, and an equivalent tool is specified as part of the POSIX standard.
Lex reads an input stream specifying the lexical analyzer and writes source code which implements the lexical analyzer in the C programming language.
In addition to C, some old versions of Lex could generate a lexer in Ratfor.
Although originally distributed as proprietary software, some versions of Lex are now open-source. Open-source versions of Lex, based on the original proprietary code, are now distributed with open-source operating systems such as OpenSolaris and Plan 9 from Bell Labs. One popular open-source version of Lex, called flex, or the "fast lexical analyzer", is not derived from proprietary coding.
The structure of a Lex file is intentionally similar to that of a yacc file: files are divided into three sections, separated by lines that contain only two percent signs, as follows:
The definitions section defines macros and imports s written in C. It is also possible to write any C code here, which will be copied verbatim into the generated source file.
The rules section associates regular expression patterns with C statements. When the lexer sees text in the input matching a given pattern, it will execute the associated C code.
The C code section contains C statements and functions that are copied verbatim to the generated source file. These statements presumably contain code called by the rules in the rules section. In large programs it is more convenient to place this code in a separate file linked in at compile time.
The following is an example Lex file for the flex version of Lex. It recognizes strings of numbers (positive integers) in the input, and simply prints them out.
/*** Definition section **/
%{
/ C code to be copied verbatim */
#include
Official source
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