Description
a brief overview of the tool
Some Simple Examples
Format Of The Input File
Patterns
the extended regular expressions used by flex
How The Input Is Matched
the rules for determining what has been matched
Actions
how to specify what to do when a pattern is matched
The Generated Scanner
details regarding the scanner that flex produces;
how to control the input source
Start Conditions
introducing context into your scanners, and
managing "mini-scanners"
Multiple Input Buffers
how to manipulate multiple input sources; how to
scan from strings instead of files
End-of-file Rules
special rules for matching the end of the input
Miscellaneous Macros
a summary of macros available to the actions
Values Available To The User
a summary of values available to the actions
Interfacing With Yacc
connecting flex scanners together with yacc parsers
Options
flex command-line options, and the "%option"
directive
Performance Considerations
how to make your scanner go as fast as possible
Generating C++ Scanners
the (experimental) facility for generating C++
scanner classes
Incompatibilities With Lex And POSIX
how flex differs from AT&T lex and the POSIX lex
standard
Diagnostics
those error messages produced by flex (or scanners
it generates) whose meanings might not be apparent
Files
files used by flex
Deficiencies / Bugs
known problems with flex
See Also
other documentation, related tools
Author
includes contact information
First some simple examples to get the flavor of how one uses flex. The following flex input specifies a scanner which whenever it encounters the string "username" will replace it with the user's login name:
%%
username printf( "%s", getlogin() );
By default, any text not matched by a
flex
scanner
is copied to the output, so the net effect of this scanner is
to copy its input file to its output with each occurrence
of "username" expanded.
In this input, there is just one rule. "username" is the
pattern
and the "printf" is the
action.
The "%%" marks the beginning of the rules.
Here's another simple example:
int num_lines = 0, num_chars = 0;
%%
\n ++num_lines; ++num_chars;
. ++num_chars;
%%
main()
{
yylex();
printf( "# of lines = %d, # of chars = %d\n",
num_lines, num_chars );
}
This scanner counts the number of characters and the number
of lines in its input (it produces no output other than the
final report on the counts). The first line
declares two globals, "num_lines" and "num_chars", which are accessible
both inside
yylex()
and in the
main()
routine declared after the second "%%". There are two rules, one
which matches a newline ("\n") and increments both the line count and
the character count, and one which matches any character other than
a newline (indicated by the "." regular expression).
A somewhat more complicated example:
/* scanner for a toy Pascal-like language */
%{
/* need this for the call to atof() below */
#include <math.h>
%}
DIGIT [0-9]
ID [a-z][a-z0-9]*
%%
{DIGIT}+ {
printf( "An integer: %s (%d)\n", yytext,
atoi( yytext ) );
}
{DIGIT}+"."{DIGIT}* {
printf( "A float: %s (%g)\n", yytext,
atof( yytext ) );
}
if|then|begin|end|procedure|function {
printf( "A keyword: %s\n", yytext );
}
{ID} printf( "An identifier: %s\n", yytext );
"+"|"-"|"*"|"/" printf( "An operator: %s\n", yytext );
"{"[^}\n]*"}" /* eat up one-line comments */
[ \t\n]+ /* eat up whitespace */
. printf( "Unrecognized character: %s\n", yytext );
%%
main( argc, argv )
int argc;
char **argv;
{
++argv, --argc; /* skip over program name */
if ( argc > 0 )
yyin = fopen( argv[0], "r" );
else
yyin = stdin;
yylex();
}
This is the beginnings of a simple scanner for a language like
Pascal. It identifies different types of
tokens
and reports on what it has seen.
The details of this example will be explained in the following sections.
definitions
%%
rules
%%
user code
The
definitions
section contains declarations of simple
name
definitions to simplify the scanner specification, and declarations of
start
which are explained in a later section.
Name definitions have the form:
name definition
The "name" is a word beginning with a letter or an underscore ('_')
followed by zero or more letters, digits, '_', or '-' (dash).
The definition is taken to begin at the first non-white-space character
following the name and continuing to the end of the line.
The definition can subsequently be referred to using "{name}", which
will expand to "(definition)". For example,
DIGIT [0-9]
ID [a-z][a-z0-9]*
defines "DIGIT" to be a regular expression which matches a
single digit, and
"ID" to be a regular expression which matches a letter
followed by zero-or-more letters-or-digits.
A subsequent reference to
{DIGIT}+"."{DIGIT}*
is identical to
([0-9])+"."([0-9])*
and matches one-or-more digits followed by a '.' followed
by zero-or-more digits.
The rules section of the flex input contains a series of rules of the form:
pattern action
where the pattern must be unindented and the action must begin
on the same line.
See below for a further description of patterns and actions.
Finally, the user code section is simply copied to lex.yy.c verbatim. It is used for companion routines which call or are called by the scanner. The presence of this section is optional; if it is missing, the second %% in the input file may be skipped, too.
In the definitions and rules sections, any indented text or text enclosed in %{ and %} is copied verbatim to the output (with the %{}'s removed). The %{}'s must appear unindented on lines by themselves.
In the rules section, any indented or %{} text appearing before the first rule may be used to declare variables which are local to the scanning routine and (after the declarations) code which is to be executed whenever the scanning routine is entered. Other indented or %{} text in the rule section is still copied to the output, but its meaning is not well-defined and it may well cause compile-time errors (this feature is present for POSIX compliance; see below for other such features).
In the definitions section (but not in the rules section), an unindented comment (i.e., a line beginning with "/*") is also copied verbatim to the output up to the next "*/".
x match the character 'x'
. any character (byte) except newline
[xyz] a "character class"; in this case, the pattern
matches either an 'x', a 'y', or a 'z'
[abj-oZ] a "character class" with a range in it; matches
an 'a', a 'b', any letter from 'j' through 'o',
or a 'Z'
[^A-Z] a "negated character class", i.e., any character
but those in the class. In this case, any
character EXCEPT an uppercase letter.
[^A-Z\n] any character EXCEPT an uppercase letter or
a newline
r* zero or more r's, where r is any regular expression
r+ one or more r's
r? zero or one r's (that is, "an optional r")
r{2,5} anywhere from two to five r's
r{2,} two or more r's
r{4} exactly 4 r's
{name} the expansion of the "name" definition
(see above)
"[xyz]\"foo"
the literal string: [xyz]"foo
\X if X is an 'a', 'b', 'f', 'n', 'r', 't', or 'v',
then the ANSI-C interpretation of \x.
Otherwise, a literal 'X' (used to escape
operators such as '*')
\ a NUL character (ASCII code 0)
\123 the character with octal value 123
\x2a the character with hexadecimal value 2a
(r) match an r; parentheses are used to override
precedence (see below)
rs the regular expression r followed by the
regular expression s; called "concatenation"
r|s either an r or an s
r/s an r but only if it is followed by an s. The
text matched by s is included when determining
whether this rule is the "longest match",
but is then returned to the input before
the action is executed. So the action only
sees the text matched by r. This type
of pattern is called trailing context".
(There are some combinations of r/s that flex
cannot match correctly; see notes in the
Deficiencies / Bugs section below regarding
"dangerous trailing context".)
^r an r, but only at the beginning of a line (i.e.,
which just starting to scan, or right after a
newline has been scanned).
r$ an r, but only at the end of a line (i.e., just
before a newline). Equivalent to "r/\n".
Note that flex's notion of "newline" is exactly
whatever the C compiler used to compile flex
interprets '\n' as; in particular, on some DOS
systems you must either filter out \r's in the
input yourself, or explicitly use r/\r\n for "r$".
<s>r an r, but only in start condition s (see
below for discussion of start conditions)
<s1,s2,s3>r
same, but in any of start conditions s1,
s2, or s3
<*>r an r in any start condition, even an exclusive one.
<<EOF>> an end-of-file
<s1,s2><<EOF>>
an end-of-file when in start condition s1 or s2
Note that inside of a character class, all regular expression operators
lose their special meaning except escape ('\') and the character class
operators, '-', ']', and, at the beginning of the class, '^'.
The regular expressions listed above are grouped according to precedence, from highest precedence at the top to lowest at the bottom. Those grouped together have equal precedence. For example,
foo|bar*
is the same as
(foo)|(ba(r*))
since the '*' operator has higher precedence than concatenation,
and concatenation higher than alternation ('|'). This pattern
therefore matches
either
the string "foo"
or
the string "ba" followed by zero-or-more r's.
To match "foo" or zero-or-more "bar"'s, use:
foo|(bar)*
and to match zero-or-more "foo"'s-or-"bar"'s:
(foo|bar)*
In addition to characters and ranges of characters, character classes can also contain character class expressions. These are expressions enclosed inside [: and :] delimiters (which themselves must appear between the '[' and ']' of the character class; other elements may occur inside the character class, too). The valid expressions are:
[:alnum:] [:alpha:] [:blank:]
[:cntrl:] [:digit:] [:graph:]
[:lower:] [:print:] [:punct:]
[:space:] [:upper:] [:xdigit:]
These expressions all designate a set of characters equivalent to
the corresponding standard C
isXXX
function. For example,
[:alnum:]
designates those characters for which
isalnum()
returns true - i.e., any alphabetic or numeric.
Some systems don't provide
isblank(),
so flex defines
[:blank:]
as a blank or a tab.
For example, the following character classes are all equivalent:
[[:alnum:]]
[[:alpha:][:digit:]
[[:alpha:]0-9]
[a-zA-Z0-9]
If your scanner is case-insensitive (the
-i
flag), then
[:upper:]
and
[:lower:]
are equivalent to
[:alpha:].
Some notes on patterns:
A negated character class such as the example "[^A-Z]" above will unless "\n" (or an equivalent escape sequence) is one of the characters explicitly present in the negated character class (e.g., "[^A-Z\n]"). This is unlike how many other regular expression tools treat negated character classes, but unfortunately the inconsistency is historically entrenched. Matching newlines means that a pattern like [^"]* can match the entire input unless there's another quote in the input.
A rule can have at most one instance of trailing context (the '/' operator or the '$' operator). The start condition, '^', and "<<EOF>>" patterns can only occur at the beginning of a pattern, and, as well as with '/' and '$', cannot be grouped inside parentheses. A '^' which does not occur at the beginning of a rule or a '$' which does not occur at the end of a rule loses its special properties and is treated as a normal character.
The following are illegal:
foo/bar$
<sc1>foo<sc2>bar
Note that the first of these, can be written "foo/bar\n".
The following will result in '$' or '^' being treated as a normal character:
foo|(bar$)
foo|^bar
If what's wanted is a "foo" or a bar-followed-by-a-newline, the following
could be used (the special '|' action is explained below):
foo |
bar$ /* action goes here */
A similar trick will work for matching a foo or a
bar-at-the-beginning-of-a-line.
Once the match is determined, the text corresponding to the match (called the token) is made available in the global character pointer yytext, and its length in the global integer yyleng. The action corresponding to the matched pattern is then executed (a more detailed description of actions follows), and then the remaining input is scanned for another match.
If no match is found, then the default is executed: the next character in the input is considered matched and copied to the standard output. Thus, the simplest legal flex input is:
%%
which generates a scanner that simply copies its input (one character
at a time) to its output.
Note that yytext can be defined in two different ways: either as a character pointer or as a character array. You can control which definition flex uses by including one of the special directives %pointer or %array in the first (definitions) section of your flex input. The default is %pointer, unless you use the -l lex compatibility option, in which case yytext will be an array. The advantage of using %pointer is substantially faster scanning and no buffer overflow when matching very large tokens (unless you run out of dynamic memory). The disadvantage is that you are restricted in how your actions can modify yytext (see the next section), and calls to the unput() function destroys the present contents of yytext, which can be a considerable porting headache when moving between different lex versions.
The advantage of %array is that you can then modify yytext to your heart's content, and calls to unput() do not destroy yytext (see below). Furthermore, existing lex programs sometimes access yytext externally using declarations of the form:
extern char yytext[];
This definition is erroneous when used with
%pointer,
but correct for
%array.
%array defines yytext to be an array of YYLMAX characters, which defaults to a fairly large value. You can change the size by simply #define'ing YYLMAX to a different value in the first section of your flex input. As mentioned above, with %pointer yytext grows dynamically to accommodate large tokens. While this means your %pointer scanner can accommodate very large tokens (such as matching entire blocks of comments), bear in mind that each time the scanner must resize yytext it also must rescan the entire token from the beginning, so matching such tokens can prove slow. yytext presently does not dynamically grow if a call to unput() results in too much text being pushed back; instead, a run-time error results.
Also note that you cannot use %array with C++ scanner classes (the c++ option; see below).
%%
"zap me"
(It will copy all other characters in the input to the output since
they will be matched by the default rule.)
Here is a program which compresses multiple blanks and tabs down to a single blank, and throws away whitespace found at the end of a line:
%%
[ \t]+ putchar( ' ' );
[ \t]+$ /* ignore this token */
If the action contains a '{', then the action spans till the balancing '}' is found, and the action may cross multiple lines. flex knows about C strings and comments and won't be fooled by braces found within them, but also allows actions to begin with %{ and will consider the action to be all the text up to the next %} (regardless of ordinary braces inside the action).
An action consisting solely of a vertical bar ('|') means "same as the action for the next rule." See below for an illustration.
Actions can include arbitrary C code, including return statements to return a value to whatever routine called yylex(). Each time yylex() is called it continues processing tokens from where it last left off until it either reaches the end of the file or executes a return.
Actions are free to modify yytext except for lengthening it (adding characters to its end--these will overwrite later characters in the input stream). This however does not apply when using %array (see above); in that case, yytext may be freely modified in any way.
Actions are free to modify yyleng except they should not do so if the action also includes use of yymore() (see below).
There are a number of special directives which can be included within an action:
ECHO copies yytext to the scanner's output.
BEGIN followed by the name of a start condition places the scanner in the corresponding start condition (see below).
REJECT directs the scanner to proceed on to the "second best" rule which matched the input (or a prefix of the input). The rule is chosen as described above in "How the Input is Matched", and yytext and yyleng set up appropriately. It may either be one which matched as much text as the originally chosen rule but came later in the flex input file, or one which matched less text. For example, the following will both count the words in the input and call the routine special() whenever "frob" is seen:
int word_count = 0;
%%
frob special(); REJECT;
[^ \t\n]+ ++word_count;
Without the
REJECT,
any "frob"'s in the input would not be counted as words, since the
scanner normally executes only one action per token.
Multiple
REJECT's
are allowed, each one finding the next best choice to the currently
active rule. For example, when the following scanner scans the token
"abcd", it will write "abcdabcaba" to the output:
%%
a |
ab |
abc |
abcd ECHO; REJECT;
.|\n /* eat up any unmatched character */
(The first three rules share the fourth's action since they use
the special '|' action.)
REJECT
is a particularly expensive feature in terms of scanner performance;
if it is used in
any
of the scanner's actions it will slow down
all
of the scanner's matching. Furthermore,
REJECT
cannot be used with the
-Cf
or
-CF
options (see below).
Note also that unlike the other special actions, REJECT is a branch; code immediately following it in the action will not be executed.
yymore() tells the scanner that the next time it matches a rule, the corresponding token should be appended onto the current value of yytext rather than replacing it. For example, given the input "mega-kludge" the following will write "mega-mega-kludge" to the output:
%%
mega- ECHO; yymore();
kludge ECHO;
First "mega-" is matched and echoed to the output. Then "kludge"
is matched, but the previous "mega-" is still hanging around at the
beginning of
yytext
so the
ECHO
for the "kludge" rule will actually write "mega-kludge".
Two notes regarding use of yymore(). First, yymore() depends on the value of yyleng correctly reflecting the size of the current token, so you must not modify yyleng if you are using yymore(). Second, the presence of yymore() in the scanner's action entails a minor performance penalty in the scanner's matching speed.
yyless(n) returns all but the first n characters of the current token back to the input stream, where they will be rescanned when the scanner looks for the next match. yytext and yyleng are adjusted appropriately (e.g., yyleng will now be equal to n ). For example, on the input "foobar" the following will write out "foobarbar":
%%
foobar ECHO; yyless(3);
[a-z]+ ECHO;
An argument of 0 to
yyless
will cause the entire current input string to be scanned again. Unless you've
changed how the scanner will subsequently process its input (using
BEGIN,
for example), this will result in an endless loop.
Note that yyless is a macro and can only be used in the flex input file, not from other source files.
unput(c) puts the character c back onto the input stream. It will be the next character scanned. The following action will take the current token and cause it to be rescanned enclosed in parentheses.
{
int i;
/* Copy yytext because unput() trashes yytext */
char *yycopy = strdup( yytext );
unput( ')' );
for ( i = yyleng - 1; i >= 0; --i )
unput( yycopy[i] );
unput( '(' );
free( yycopy );
}
Note that since each
unput()
puts the given character back at the
beginning
of the input stream, pushing back strings must be done back-to-front.
An important potential problem when using unput() is that if you are using %pointer (the default), a call to unput() destroys the contents of yytext, starting with its rightmost character and devouring one character to the left with each call. If you need the value of yytext preserved after a call to unput() (as in the above example), you must either first copy it elsewhere, or build your scanner using %array instead (see How The Input Is Matched).
Finally, note that you cannot put back EOF to attempt to mark the input stream with an end-of-file.
input() reads the next character from the input stream. For example, the following is one way to eat up C comments:
%%
"/*" {
register int c;
for ( ; ; )
{
while ( (c = input()) != '*' &&
c != EOF )
; /* eat up text of comment */
if ( c == '*' )
{
while ( (c = input()) == '*' )
;
if ( c == '/' )
break; /* found the end */
}
if ( c == EOF )
{
error( "EOF in comment" );
break;
}
}
}
(Note that if the scanner is compiled using
C++,
then
input()
is instead referred to as
yyinput(),
in order to avoid a name clash with the
C++
stream by the name of
input.)
YY_FLUSH_BUFFER flushes the scanner's internal buffer so that the next time the scanner attempts to match a token, it will first refill the buffer using YY_INPUT (see The Generated Scanner, below). This action is a special case of the more general yy_flush_buffer() function, described below in the section Multiple Input Buffers.
yyterminate() can be used in lieu of a return statement in an action. It terminates the scanner and returns a 0 to the scanner's caller, indicating "all done". By default, yyterminate() is also called when an end-of-file is encountered. It is a macro and may be redefined.
int yylex()
{
... various definitions and the actions in here ...
}
(If your environment supports function prototypes, then it will
be "int yylex( void )".) This definition may be changed by defining
the "YY_DECL" macro. For example, you could use:
#define YY_DECL float lexscan( a, b ) float a, b;
to give the scanning routine the name
lexscan,
returning a float, and taking two floats as arguments. Note that
if you give arguments to the scanning routine using a
K&R-style/non-prototyped function declaration, you must terminate
the definition with a semi-colon (;).
Whenever yylex() is called, it scans tokens from the global input file yyin (which defaults to stdin). It continues until it either reaches an end-of-file (at which point it returns the value 0) or one of its actions executes a return statement.
If the scanner reaches an end-of-file, subsequent calls are undefined unless either yyin is pointed at a new input file (in which case scanning continues from that file), or yyrestart() is called. yyrestart() takes one argument, a FILE pointer (which can be nil, if you've set up YY_INPUT to scan from a source other than yyin), and initializes yyin for scanning from that file. Essentially there is no difference between just assigning yyin to a new input file or using yyrestart() to do so; the latter is available for compatibility with previous versions of flex, and because it can be used to switch input files in the middle of scanning. It can also be used to throw away the current input buffer, by calling it with an argument of yyin; but better is to use YY_FLUSH_BUFFER (see above). Note that yyrestart() does not reset the start condition to INITIAL (see Start Conditions, below).
If yylex() stops scanning due to executing a return statement in one of the actions, the scanner may then be called again and it will resume scanning where it left off.
By default (and for purposes of efficiency), the scanner uses block-reads rather than simple getc() calls to read characters from yyin. The nature of how it gets its input can be controlled by defining the YY_INPUT macro. YY_INPUT's calling sequence is "YY_INPUT(buf,result,max_size)". Its action is to place up to max_size characters in the character array buf and return in the integer variable result either the number of characters read or the constant YY_NULL (0 on Unix systems) to indicate EOF. The default YY_INPUT reads from the global file-pointer "yyin".
A sample definition of YY_INPUT (in the definitions section of the input file):
%{
#define YY_INPUT(buf,result,max_size) \
{ \
int c = getchar(); \
result = (c == EOF) ? YY_NULL : (buf[0] = c, 1); \
}
%}
This definition will change the input processing to occur
one character at a time.
When the scanner receives an end-of-file indication from YY_INPUT, it then checks the yywrap() function. If yywrap() returns false (zero), then it is assumed that the function has gone ahead and set up yyin to point to another input file, and scanning continues. If it returns true (non-zero), then the scanner terminates, returning 0 to its caller. Note that in either case, the start condition remains unchanged; it does not revert to INITIAL.
If you do not supply your own version of yywrap(), then you must either use %option (in which case the scanner behaves as though yywrap() returned 1), or you must link with -lfl to obtain the default version of the routine, which always returns 1.
Three routines are available for scanning from in-memory buffers rather than files: yy_scan_string(), and yy_scan_buffer(). See the discussion of them below in the section Multiple Input Buffers.
The scanner writes its ECHO output to the yyout global (default, stdout), which may be redefined by the user simply by assigning it to some other FILE pointer.
<STRING>[^"]* { /* eat up the string body ... */
...
}
will be active only when the scanner is in the "STRING" start
condition, and
<INITIAL,STRING,QUOTE>\. { /* handle an escape ... */
...
}
will be active only when the current start condition is
either "INITIAL", "STRING", or "QUOTE".
Start conditions are declared in the definitions (first) section of the input using unindented lines beginning with either %s or %x followed by a list of names. The former declares inclusive start conditions, the latter exclusive start conditions. A start condition is activated using the BEGIN action. Until the next BEGIN action is executed, rules with the given start condition will be active and rules with other start conditions will be inactive. If the start condition is inclusive, then rules with no start conditions at all will also be active. If it is exclusive, then only rules qualified with the start condition will be active. A set of rules contingent on the same exclusive start condition describe a scanner which is independent of any of the other rules in the flex input. Because of this, exclusive start conditions make it easy to specify "mini-scanners" which scan portions of the input that are syntactically different from the rest (e.g., comments).
If the distinction between inclusive and exclusive start conditions is still a little vague, here's a simple example illustrating the connection between the two. The set of rules:
%s example
%%
<example>foo do_something();
bar something_else();
is equivalent to
%x example
%%
<example>foo do_something();
<INITIAL,example>bar something_else();
Without the
<INITIAL,example>
qualifier, the
bar
pattern in the second example wouldn't be active (i.e., couldn't match)
when in start condition
example.
If we just used
<example>
to qualify
bar,
though, then it would only be active in
example
and not in
INITIAL,
while in the first example it's active in both, because in the first
example the
example
startion condition is an
inclusive
(%s)
start condition.
Also note that the special start-condition specifier <*> matches every start condition. Thus, the above example could also have been written;
%x example
%%
<example>foo do_something();
<*>bar something_else();
The default rule (to ECHO any unmatched character) remains active in start conditions. It is equivalent to:
<*>.|\n ECHO;
BEGIN(0) returns to the original state where only the rules with no start conditions are active. This state can also be referred to as the start-condition "INITIAL", so BEGIN(INITIAL) is equivalent to BEGIN(0). (The parentheses around the start condition name are not required but are considered good style.)
BEGIN actions can also be given as indented code at the beginning of the rules section. For example, the following will cause the scanner to enter the "SPECIAL" start condition whenever yylex() is called and the global variable enter_special is true:
int enter_special;
%x SPECIAL
%%
if ( enter_special )
BEGIN(SPECIAL);
<SPECIAL>blahblahblah
...more rules follow...
To illustrate the uses of start conditions, here is a scanner which provides two different interpretations of a string like "123.456". By default it will treat it as three tokens, the integer "123", a dot ('.'), and the integer "456". But if the string is preceded earlier in the line by the string "expect-floats" it will treat it as a single token, the floating-point number 123.456:
%{
#include <math.h>
%}
%s expect
%%
expect-floats BEGIN(expect);
<expect>[0-9]+"."[0-9]+ {
printf( "found a float, = %f\n",
atof( yytext ) );
}
<expect>\n {
/* that's the end of the line, so
* we need another "expect-number"
* before we'll recognize any more
* numbers
*/
BEGIN(INITIAL);
}
[0-9]+ {
printf( "found an integer, = %d\n",
atoi( yytext ) );
}
"." printf( "found a dot\n" );
Here is a scanner which recognizes (and discards) C comments while
maintaining a count of the current input line.
%x comment
%%
int line_num = 1;
"/*" BEGIN(comment);
<comment>[^*\n]* /* eat anything that's not a '*' */
<comment>"*"+[^*/\n]* /* eat up '*'s not followed by '/'s */
<comment>\n ++line_num;
<comment>"*"+"/" BEGIN(INITIAL);
This scanner goes to a bit of trouble to match as much
text as possible with each rule. In general, when attempting to write
a high-speed scanner try to match as much possible in each rule, as
it's a big win.
Note that start-conditions names are really integer values and can be stored as such. Thus, the above could be extended in the following fashion:
%x comment foo
%%
int line_num = 1;
int comment_caller;
"/*" {
comment_caller = INITIAL;
BEGIN(comment);
}
...
<foo>"/*" {
comment_caller = foo;
BEGIN(comment);
}
<comment>[^*\n]* /* eat anything that's not a '*' */
<comment>"*"+[^*/\n]* /* eat up '*'s not followed by '/'s */
<comment>\n ++line_num;
<comment>"*"+"/" BEGIN(comment_caller);
Furthermore, you can access the current start condition using
the integer-valued
YY_START
macro. For example, the above assignments to
comment_caller
could instead be written
comment_caller = YY_START;
Flex provides
YYSTATE
as an alias for
YY_START
(since that is what's used by AT&T
lex).
Note that start conditions do not have their own name-space; %s's and %x's declare names in the same fashion as #define's.
Finally, here's an example of how to match C-style quoted strings using exclusive start conditions, including expanded escape sequences (but not including checking for a string that's too long):
%x str
%%
char string_buf[MAX_STR_CONST];
char *string_buf_ptr;
\" string_buf_ptr = string_buf; BEGIN(str);
<str>\" { /* saw closing quote - all done */
BEGIN(INITIAL);
*string_buf_ptr = '\ ';
/* return string constant token type and
* value to parser
*/
}
<str>\n {
/* error - unterminated string constant */
/* generate error message */
}
<str>\\[0-7]{1,3} {
/* octal escape sequence */
int result;
(void) sscanf( yytext + 1, "%o", &result );
if ( result > 0xff )
/* error, constant is out-of-bounds */
*string_buf_ptr++ = result;
}
<str>\\[0-9]+ {
/* generate error - bad escape sequence; something
* like '\48' or '\ 777777'
*/
}
<str>\\n *string_buf_ptr++ = '\n';
<str>\\t *string_buf_ptr++ = '\t';
<str>\\r *string_buf_ptr++ = '\r';
<str>\\b *string_buf_ptr++ = '\b';
<str>\\f *string_buf_ptr++ = '\f';
<str>\\(.|\n) *string_buf_ptr++ = yytext[1];
<str>[^\\\n\"]+ {
char *yptr = yytext;
while ( *yptr )
*string_buf_ptr++ = *yptr++;
}
Often, such as in some of the examples above, you wind up writing a whole bunch of rules all preceded by the same start condition(s). Flex makes this a little easier and cleaner by introducing a notion of start condition scope. A start condition scope is begun with:
<SCs>{
where
SCs
is a list of one or more start conditions. Inside the start condition
scope, every rule automatically has the prefix
<SCs>
applied to it, until a
'}'
which matches the initial
'{'.
So, for example,
<ESC>{
"\\n" return '\n';
"\\r" return '\r';
"\\f" return '\f';
"\\ " return '\ ';
}
is equivalent to:
<ESC>"\\n" return '\n';
<ESC>"\\r" return '\r';
<ESC>"\\f" return '\f';
<ESC>"\\ " return '\ ';
Start condition scopes may be nested.
Three routines are available for manipulating stacks of start conditions:
To use start condition stacks, your scanner must include a %option directive (see Options below).
To negotiate these sorts of problems, flex provides a mechanism for creating and switching between multiple input buffers. An input buffer is created by using:
YY_BUFFER_STATE yy_create_buffer( FILE *file, int size )
which takes a
FILE
pointer and a size and creates a buffer associated with the given
file and large enough to hold
size
characters (when in doubt, use
YY_BUF_SIZE
for the size). It returns a
YY_BUFFER_STATE
handle, which may then be passed to other routines (see below). The
YY_BUFFER_STATE
type is a pointer to an opaque
struct
structure, so you may safely initialize YY_BUFFER_STATE variables to
((YY_BUFFER_STATE)
if you wish, and also refer to the opaque structure in order to
correctly declare input buffers in source files other than that
of your scanner. Note that the
FILE
pointer in the call to
yy_create_buffer
is only used as the value of
yyin
seen by
YY_INPUT;
if you redefine
YY_INPUT
so it no longer uses
yyin,
then you can safely pass a nil
FILE
pointer to
yy_create_buffer.
You select a particular buffer to scan from using:
void yy_switch_to_buffer( YY_BUFFER_STATE new_buffer )
switches the scanner's input buffer so subsequent tokens will
come from
new_buffer.
Note that
yy_switch_to_buffer()
may be used by yywrap() to set things up for continued scanning, instead
of opening a new file and pointing
yyin
at it. Note also that switching input sources via either
yy_switch_to_buffer()
or
yywrap()
does
not
change the start condition.
void yy_delete_buffer( YY_BUFFER_STATE buffer )
is used to reclaim the storage associated with a buffer. (
buffer
can be nil, in which case the routine does nothing.)
You can also clear the current contents of a buffer using:
void yy_flush_buffer( YY_BUFFER_STATE buffer )
This function discards the buffer's contents,
so the next time the scanner attempts to match a token from the
buffer, it will first fill the buffer anew using
YY_INPUT.
yy_new_buffer() is an alias for yy_create_buffer(), provided for compatibility with the C++ use of new and delete for creating and destroying dynamic objects.
Finally, the YY_CURRENT_BUFFER macro returns a YY_BUFFER_STATE handle to the current buffer.
Here is an example of using these features for writing a scanner which expands include files (the <<EOF>> feature is discussed below):
/* the "incl" state is used for picking up the name
* of an include file
*/
%x incl
%{
#define MAX_INCLUDE_DEPTH 10
YY_BUFFER_STATE include_stack[MAX_INCLUDE_DEPTH];
int include_stack_ptr = 0;
%}
%%
include BEGIN(incl);
[a-z]+ ECHO;
[^a-z\n]*\n? ECHO;
<incl>[ \t]* /* eat the whitespace */
<incl>[^ \t\n]+ { /* got the include file name */
if ( include_stack_ptr >= MAX_INCLUDE_DEPTH )
{
fprintf( stderr, "Includes nested too deeply" );
exit( 1 );
}
include_stack[include_stack_ptr++] =
YY_CURRENT_BUFFER;
yyin = fopen( yytext, "r" );
if ( ! yyin )
error( ... );
yy_switch_to_buffer(
yy_create_buffer( yyin, YY_BUF_SIZE ) );
BEGIN(INITIAL);
}
<<EOF>> {
if ( --include_stack_ptr < 0 )
{
yyterminate();
}
else
{
yy_delete_buffer( YY_CURRENT_BUFFER );
yy_switch_to_buffer(
include_stack[include_stack_ptr] );
}
}
Three routines are available for setting up input buffers for
scanning in-memory strings instead of files. All of them create
a new input buffer for scanning the string, and return a corresponding
YY_BUFFER_STATE
handle (which you should delete with
yy_delete_buffer()
when done with it). They also switch to the new buffer using
yy_switch_to_buffer(),
so the next call to
yylex()
will start scanning the string.
If you fail to set up base in this manner (i.e., forget the final two YY_END_OF_BUFFER_CHAR bytes), then yy_scan_buffer() returns a nil pointer instead of creating a new input buffer.
The type yy_size_t is an integral type to which you can cast an integer expression reflecting the size of the buffer.
assigning yyin to a new input file (in previous versions of flex, after doing the assignment you had to call the special action YY_NEW_FILE; this is no longer necessary);
executing a return statement;
executing the special yyterminate() action;
or, switching to a new buffer using yy_switch_to_buffer() as shown in the example above.
<<EOF>> rules may not be used with other patterns; they may only be qualified with a list of start conditions. If an unqualified <<EOF>> rule is given, it applies to all start conditions which do not already have <<EOF>> actions. To specify an <<EOF>> rule for only the initial start condition, use
<INITIAL><<EOF>>
These rules are useful for catching things like unclosed comments. An example:
%x quote
%%
...other rules for dealing with quotes...
<quote><<EOF>> {
error( "unterminated quote" );
yyterminate();
}
<<EOF>> {
if ( *++filelist )
yyin = fopen( *filelist, "r" );
else
yyterminate();
}
#define YY_USER_ACTION ++ctr[yy_act]
where
ctr
is an array to hold the counts for the different rules. Note that
the macro
YY_NUM_RULES
gives the total number of rules (including the default rule, even if
you use
-s),
so a correct declaration for
ctr
is:
int ctr[YY_NUM_RULES];
The macro YY_USER_INIT may be defined to provide an action which is always executed before the first scan (and before the scanner's internal initializations are done). For example, it could be used to call a routine to read in a data table or open a logging file.
The macro yy_set_interactive(is_interactive) can be used to control whether the current buffer is considered interactive. An interactive buffer is processed more slowly, but must be used when the scanner's input source is indeed interactive to avoid problems due to waiting to fill buffers (see the discussion of the -I flag below). A non-zero value in the macro invocation marks the buffer as interactive, a zero value as non-interactive. Note that use of this macro overrides %option or %option (see Options below). yy_set_interactive() must be invoked prior to beginning to scan the buffer that is (or is not) to be considered interactive.
The macro yy_set_bol(at_bol) can be used to control whether the current buffer's scanning context for the next token match is done as though at the beginning of a line. A non-zero macro argument makes rules anchored with '^' active, while a zero argument makes '^' rules inactive.
The macro YY_AT_BOL() returns true if the next token scanned from the current buffer will have '^' rules active, false otherwise.
In the generated scanner, the actions are all gathered in one large switch statement and separated using YY_BREAK, which may be redefined. By default, it is simply a "break", to separate each rule's action from the following rule's. Redefining YY_BREAK allows, for example, C++ users to #define YY_BREAK to do nothing (while being very careful that every rule ends with a "break" or a "return"!) to avoid suffering from unreachable statement warnings where because a rule's action ends with "return", the YY_BREAK is inaccessible.
char holds the text of the current token. It may be modified but not lengthened (you cannot append characters to the end).
If the special directive %array appears in the first section of the scanner description, then yytext is instead declared char where YYLMAX is a macro definition that you can redefine in the first section if you don't like the default value (generally 8KB). Using %array results in somewhat slower scanners, but the value of yytext becomes immune to calls to input() and unput(), which potentially destroy its value when yytext is a character pointer. The opposite of %array is %pointer, which is the default.
You cannot use %array when generating C++ scanner classes (the -+ flag).
int holds the length of the current token.
FILE is the file which by default flex reads from. It may be redefined but doing so only makes sense before scanning begins or after an EOF has been encountered. Changing it in the midst of scanning will have unexpected results since flex buffers its input; use yyrestart() instead. Once scanning terminates because an end-of-file has been seen, you can assign yyin at the new input file and then call the scanner again to continue scanning.
void may be called to point yyin at the new input file. The switch-over to the new file is immediate (any previously buffered-up input is lost). Note that calling yyrestart() with yyin as an argument thus throws away the current input buffer and continues scanning the same input file.
FILE is the file to which ECHO actions are done. It can be reassigned by the user.
YY_CURRENT_BUFFER returns a YY_BUFFER_STATE handle to the current buffer.
YY_START returns an integer value corresponding to the current start condition. You can subsequently use this value with BEGIN to return to that start condition.
%{
#include "y.tab.h"
%}
%%
[0-9]+ yylval = atoi( yytext ); return TOK_NUMBER;
--accepting rule at line 53 ("the matched text")
The line number refers to the location of the rule in the file
defining the scanner (i.e., the file that was fed to flex). Messages
are also generated when the scanner backs up, accepts the
default rule, reaches the end of its input buffer (or encounters
a NUL; at this point, the two look the same as far as the scanner's concerned),
or reaches an end-of-file.
Note that the use of REJECT, %option and variable trailing context (see the Deficiencies / Bugs section below) entails a substantial performance penalty; use of yymore(), the ^ operator, and the -I flag entail minor performance penalties.
"case" return TOK_CASE;
"switch" return TOK_SWITCH;
...
"default" return TOK_DEFAULT;
[a-z]+ return TOK_ID;
then you're better off using the full table representation. If only
the "identifier" rule is present and you then use a hash table or some such
to detect the keywords, you're better off using
-F.
This option is equivalent to -CFr (see below). It cannot be used with -+.
Flex scanners default to interactive unless you use the -Cf or -CF table-compression options (see below). That's because if you're looking for high-performance you should be using one of these options, so if you didn't, flex assumes you'd rather trade off a bit of run-time performance for intuitive interactive behavior. Note also that you cannot use -I in conjunction with -Cf or -CF. Thus, this option is not really needed; it is on by default for all those cases in which it is allowed.
You can force a scanner to not be interactive by using -B (see above).
Note, however, that unless you generate your scanner using the -Cf or -CF table compression options, use of -7 will save only a small amount of table space, and make your scanner considerably less portable. Flex's default behavior is to generate an 8-bit scanner unless you use the -Cf or -CF, in which case flex defaults to generating 7-bit scanners unless your site was always configured to generate 8-bit scanners (as will often be the case with non-USA sites). You can tell whether flex generated a 7-bit or an 8-bit scanner by inspecting the flag summary in the -v output as described above.
Note that if you use -Cfe or -CFe (those table compression options, but also using equivalence classes as discussed see below), flex still defaults to generating an 8-bit scanner, since usually with these compression options full 8-bit tables are not much more expensive than 7-bit tables.
See the discussion of -7 above for flex's default behavior and the tradeoffs between 7-bit and 8-bit scanners.
-Ca ("align") instructs flex to trade off larger tables in the generated scanner for faster performance because the elements of the tables are better aligned for memory access and computation. On some RISC architectures, fetching and manipulating longwords is more efficient than with smaller-sized units such as shortwords. This option can double the size of the tables used by your scanner.
-Ce directs flex to construct equivalence i.e., sets of characters which have identical lexical properties (for example, if the only appearance of digits in the flex input is in the character class "[0-9]" then the digits '0', '1', ..., '9' will all be put in the same equivalence class). Equivalence classes usually give dramatic reductions in the final table/object file sizes (typically a factor of 2-5) and are pretty cheap performance-wise (one array look-up per character scanned).
-Cf specifies that the full scanner tables should be generated - flex should not compress the tables by taking advantages of similar transition functions for different states.
-CF specifies that the alternate fast scanner representation (described above under the -F flag) should be used. This option cannot be used with -+.
-Cm directs flex to construct meta-equivalence which are sets of equivalence classes (or characters, if equivalence classes are not being used) that are commonly used together. Meta-equivalence classes are often a big win when using compressed tables, but they have a moderate performance impact (one or two "if" tests and one array look-up per character scanned).
-Cr causes the generated scanner to bypass use of the standard I/O library (stdio) for input. Instead of calling fread() or getc(), the scanner will use the read() system call, resulting in a performance gain which varies from system to system, but in general is probably negligible unless you are also using -Cf or -CF. Using -Cr can cause strange behavior if, for example, you read from yyin using stdio prior to calling the scanner (because the scanner will miss whatever text your previous reads left in the stdio input buffer).
-Cr has no effect if you define YY_INPUT (see The Generated Scanner above).
A lone -C specifies that the scanner tables should be compressed but neither equivalence classes nor meta-equivalence classes should be used.
The options -Cf or -CF and -Cm do not make sense together - there is no opportunity for meta-equivalence classes if the table is not being compressed. Otherwise the options may be freely mixed, and are cumulative.
The default setting is -Cem, which specifies that flex should generate equivalence classes and meta-equivalence classes. This setting provides the highest degree of table compression. You can trade off faster-executing scanners at the cost of larger tables with the following generally being true:
slowest & smallest
-Cem
-Cm
-Ce
-C
-C{f,F}e
-C{f,F}
-C{f,F}a
fastest & largest
Note that scanners with the smallest tables are usually generated and
compiled the quickest, so
during development you will usually want to use the default, maximal
compression.
-Cfe is often a good compromise between speed and size for production scanners.
yy_create_buffer
yy_delete_buffer
yy_flex_debug
yy_init_buffer
yy_flush_buffer
yy_load_buffer_state
yy_switch_to_buffer
yyin
yyleng
yylex
yylineno
yyout
yyrestart
yytext
yywrap
(If you are using a C++ scanner, then only
yywrap
and
yyFlexLexer
are affected.)
Within your scanner itself, you can still refer to the global variables
and functions using either version of their name; but externally, they
have the modified name.
This option lets you easily link together multiple flex programs into the same executable. Note, though, that using this option also renames yywrap(), so you now must either provide your own (appropriately-named) version of the routine for your scanner, or use %option as linking with -lfl no longer provides one for you by default.
Most options are given simply as names, optionally preceded by the word "no" (with no intervening whitespace) to negate their meaning. A number are equivalent to flex flags or their negation:
7bit -7 option
8bit -8 option
align -Ca option
backup -b option
batch -B option
c++ -+ option
caseful or
case-sensitive opposite of -i (default)
case-insensitive or
caseless -i option
debug -d option
default opposite of -s option
ecs -Ce option
fast -F option
full -f option
interactive -I option
lex-compat -l option
meta-ecs -Cm option
perf-report -p option
read -Cr option
stdout -t option
verbose -v option
warn opposite of -w option
(use "%option nowarn" for -w)
array equivalent to "%array"
pointer equivalent to "%pointer" (default)
Some
%option's
provide features otherwise not available:
Three options take string-delimited values, offset with '=':
%option outfile="ABC"
is equivalent to
-oABC,
and
%option prefix="XYZ"
is equivalent to
-PXYZ.
Finally,
%option yyclass="foo"
only applies when generating a C++ scanner (
-+
option). It informs
flex
that you have derived
foo
as a subclass of
yyFlexLexer,
so
flex
will place your actions in the member function
foo::yylex()
instead of
yyFlexLexer::yylex().
It also generates a
yyFlexLexer::yylex()
member function that emits a run-time error (by invoking
yyFlexLexer::LexerError())
if called.
See Generating C++ Scanners, below, for additional information.
A number of options are available for lint purists who want to suppress the appearance of unneeded routines in the generated scanner. Each of the following, if unset (e.g., %option ), results in the corresponding routine not appearing in the generated scanner:
input, unput
yy_push_state, yy_pop_state, yy_top_state
yy_scan_buffer, yy_scan_bytes, yy_scan_string
(though
yy_push_state()
and friends won't appear anyway unless you use
%option
REJECT
%option yylineno
arbitrary trailing context
pattern sets that require backing up
%array
%option interactive
%option always-interactive
'^' beginning-of-line operator
yymore()
with the first three all being quite expensive and the last two
being quite cheap. Note also that
unput()
is implemented as a routine call that potentially does quite a bit of
work, while
yyless()
is a quite-cheap macro; so if just putting back some excess text you
scanned, use
yyless().
REJECT should be avoided at all costs when performance is important. It is a particularly expensive option.
Getting rid of backing up is messy and often may be an enormous amount of work for a complicated scanner. In principal, one begins by using the -b flag to generate a lex.backup file. For example, on the input
%%
foo return TOK_KEYWORD;
foobar return TOK_KEYWORD;
the file looks like:
State #6 is non-accepting -
associated rule line numbers:
2 3
out-transitions: [ o ]
jam-transitions: EOF [ \ 01-n p-\177 ]
State #8 is non-accepting -
associated rule line numbers:
3
out-transitions: [ a ]
jam-transitions: EOF [ \ 01-` b-\177 ]
State #9 is non-accepting -
associated rule line numbers:
3
out-transitions: [ r ]
jam-transitions: EOF [ \ 01-q s-\177 ]
Compressed tables always back up.
The first few lines tell us that there's a scanner state in
which it can make a transition on an 'o' but not on any other
character, and that in that state the currently scanned text does not match
any rule. The state occurs when trying to match the rules found
at lines 2 and 3 in the input file.
If the scanner is in that state and then reads
something other than an 'o', it will have to back up to find
a rule which is matched. With
a bit of headscratching one can see that this must be the
state it's in when it has seen "fo". When this has happened,
if anything other than another 'o' is seen, the scanner will
have to back up to simply match the 'f' (by the default rule).
The comment regarding State #8 indicates there's a problem when "foob" has been scanned. Indeed, on any character other than an 'a', the scanner will have to back up to accept "foo". Similarly, the comment for State #9 concerns when "fooba" has been scanned and an 'r' does not follow.
The final comment reminds us that there's no point going to all the trouble of removing backing up from the rules unless we're using -Cf or -CF, since there's no performance gain doing so with compressed scanners.
The way to remove the backing up is to add "error" rules:
%%
foo return TOK_KEYWORD;
foobar return TOK_KEYWORD;
fooba |
foob |
fo {
/* false alarm, not really a keyword */
return TOK_ID;
}
Eliminating backing up among a list of keywords can also be done using a "catch-all" rule:
%%
foo return TOK_KEYWORD;
foobar return TOK_KEYWORD;
[a-z]+ return TOK_ID;
This is usually the best solution when appropriate.
Backing up messages tend to cascade. With a complicated set of rules it's not uncommon to get hundreds of messages. If one can decipher them, though, it often only takes a dozen or so rules to eliminate the backing up (though it's easy to make a mistake and have an error rule accidentally match a valid token. A possible future flex feature will be to automatically add rules to eliminate backing up).
It's important to keep in mind that you gain the benefits of eliminating backing up only if you eliminate every instance of backing up. Leaving just one means you gain nothing.
Variable trailing context (where both the leading and trailing parts do not have a fixed length) entails almost the same performance loss as REJECT (i.e., substantial). So when possible a rule like:
%%
mouse|rat/(cat|dog) run();
is better written:
%%
mouse/cat|dog run();
rat/cat|dog run();
or as
%%
mouse|rat/cat run();
mouse|rat/dog run();
Note that here the special '|' action does
not
provide any savings, and can even make things worse (see
Deficiencies / Bugs below).
Another area where the user can increase a scanner's performance (and one that's easier to implement) arises from the fact that the longer the tokens matched, the faster the scanner will run. This is because with long tokens the processing of most input characters takes place in the (short) inner scanning loop, and does not often have to go through the additional work of setting up the scanning environment (e.g., yytext) for the action. Recall the scanner for C comments:
%x comment
%%
int line_num = 1;
"/*" BEGIN(comment);
<comment>[^*\n]*
<comment>"*"+[^*/\n]*
<comment>\n ++line_num;
<comment>"*"+"/" BEGIN(INITIAL);
This could be sped up by writing it as:
%x comment
%%
int line_num = 1;
"/*" BEGIN(comment);
<comment>[^*\n]*
<comment>[^*\n]*\n ++line_num;
<comment>"*"+[^*/\n]*
<comment>"*"+[^*/\n]*\n ++line_num;
<comment>"*"+"/" BEGIN(INITIAL);
Now instead of each newline requiring the processing of another
action, recognizing the newlines is "distributed" over the other rules
to keep the matched text as long as possible. Note that
adding
rules does
not
slow down the scanner! The speed of the scanner is independent
of the number of rules or (modulo the considerations given at the
beginning of this section) how complicated the rules are with
regard to operators such as '*' and '|'.
A final example in speeding up a scanner: suppose you want to scan through a file containing identifiers and keywords, one per line and with no other extraneous characters, and recognize all the keywords. A natural first approach is:
%%
asm |
auto |
break |
... etc ...
volatile |
while /* it's a keyword */
.|\n /* it's not a keyword */
To eliminate the back-tracking, introduce a catch-all rule:
%%
asm |
auto |
break |
... etc ...
volatile |
while /* it's a keyword */
[a-z]+ |
.|\n /* it's not a keyword */
Now, if it's guaranteed that there's exactly one word per line,
then we can reduce the total number of matches by a half by
merging in the recognition of newlines with that of the other
tokens:
%%
asm\n |
auto\n |
break\n |
... etc ...
volatile\n |
while\n /* it's a keyword */
[a-z]+\n |
.|\n /* it's not a keyword */
One has to be careful here, as we have now reintroduced backing up
into the scanner. In particular, while
we
know that there will never be any characters in the input stream
other than letters or newlines,
flex
can't figure this out, and it will plan for possibly needing to back up
when it has scanned a token like "auto" and then the next character
is something other than a newline or a letter. Previously it would
then just match the "auto" rule and be done, but now it has no "auto"
rule, only a "auto\n" rule. To eliminate the possibility of backing up,
we could either duplicate all rules but without final newlines, or,
since we never expect to encounter such an input and therefore don't
how it's classified, we can introduce one more catch-all rule, this
one which doesn't include a newline:
%%
asm\n |
auto\n |
break\n |
... etc ...
volatile\n |
while\n /* it's a keyword */
[a-z]+\n |
[a-z]+ |
.|\n /* it's not a keyword */
Compiled with
-Cf,
this is about as fast as one can get a
flex
scanner to go for this particular problem.
A final note: flex is slow when matching NUL's, particularly when a token contains multiple NUL's. It's best to write rules which match short amounts of text if it's anticipated that the text will often include NUL's.
Another final note regarding performance: as mentioned above in the section How the Input is Matched, dynamically resizing yytext to accommodate huge tokens is a slow process because it presently requires that the (huge) token be rescanned from the beginning. Thus if performance is vital, you should attempt to match "large" quantities of text but not "huge" quantities, where the cutoff between the two is at about 8K characters/token.
You can also use flex to generate a C++ scanner class, using the -+ option (or, equivalently, %option which is automatically specified if the name of the flex executable ends in a '+', such as flex++. When using this option, flex defaults to generating the scanner to the file lex.yy.cc instead of lex.yy.c. The generated scanner includes the header file FlexLexer.h, which defines the interface to two C++ classes.
The first class, FlexLexer, provides an abstract base class defining the general scanner class interface. It provides the following member functions:
The second class defined in FlexLexer.h is yyFlexLexer, which is derived from FlexLexer. It defines the following additional member functions:
Finally, note that the %array feature is not available to C++ scanner classes; you must use %pointer (the default).
Here is an example of a simple C++ scanner:
// An example of using the flex C++ scanner class.
%{
int mylineno = 0;
%}
string \"[^\n"]+\"
ws [ \t]+
alpha [A-Za-z]
dig [0-9]
name ({alpha}|{dig}|\$)({alpha}|{dig}|[_.\-/$])*
num1 [-+]?{dig}+\.?([eE][-+]?{dig}+)?
num2 [-+]?{dig}*\.{dig}+([eE][-+]?{dig}+)?
number {num1}|{num2}
%%
{ws} /* skip blanks and tabs */
"/*" {
int c;
while((c = yyinput()) != 0)
{
if(c == '\n')
++mylineno;
else if(c == '*')
{
if((c = yyinput()) == '/')
break;
else
unput(c);
}
}
}
{number} cout << "number " << YYText() << '\n';
\n mylineno++;
{name} cout << "name " << YYText() << '\n';
{string} cout << "string " << YYText() << '\n';
%%
int main( int /* argc */, char** /* argv */ )
{
FlexLexer* lexer = new yyFlexLexer;
while(lexer->yylex() != 0)
;
return 0;
}
If you want to create multiple (different) lexer classes, you use the
-P
flag (or the
prefix=
option) to rename each
yyFlexLexer
to some other
xxFlexLexer.
You then can include
<FlexLexer.h>
in your other sources once per lexer class, first renaming
yyFlexLexer
as follows:
#undef yyFlexLexer
#define yyFlexLexer xxFlexLexer
#include <FlexLexer.h>
#undef yyFlexLexer
#define yyFlexLexer zzFlexLexer
#include <FlexLexer.h>
if, for example, you used
%option
for one of your scanners and
%option
for the other.
IMPORTANT: the present form of the scanning class is experimental and may change considerably between major releases.
In this section we discuss all of the known areas of incompatibility between flex, AT&T lex, and the POSIX specification.
flex's -l option turns on maximum compatibility with the original AT&T lex implementation, at the cost of a major loss in the generated scanner's performance. We note below which incompatibilities can be overcome using the -l option.
flex is fully compatible with lex with the following exceptions:
The undocumented lex scanner internal variable yylineno is not supported unless -l or %option is used.
yylineno should be maintained on a per-buffer basis, rather than a per-scanner (single global variable) basis.
yylineno is not part of the POSIX specification.
The input() routine is not redefinable, though it may be called to read characters following whatever has been matched by a rule. If input() encounters an end-of-file the normal yywrap() processing is done. A ``real'' end-of-file is returned by input() as EOF.
Input is instead controlled by defining the YY_INPUT macro.
The flex restriction that input() cannot be redefined is in accordance with the POSIX specification, which simply does not specify any way of controlling the scanner's input other than by making an initial assignment to yyin.
The unput() routine is not redefinable. This restriction is in accordance with POSIX.
flex scanners are not as reentrant as lex scanners. In particular, if you have an interactive scanner and an interrupt handler which long-jumps out of the scanner, and the scanner is subsequently called again, you may get the following message:
fatal flex scanner internal error--end of buffer missed
To reenter the scanner, first use
yyrestart( yyin );
Note that this call will throw away any buffered input; usually this
isn't a problem with an interactive scanner.
Also note that flex C++ scanner classes are reentrant, so if using C++ is an option for you, you should use them instead. See "Generating C++ Scanners" above for details.
output() is not supported. Output from the ECHO macro is done to the file-pointer yyout (default stdout).
output() is not part of the POSIX specification.
lex does not support exclusive start conditions (%x), though they are in the POSIX specification.
When definitions are expanded, flex encloses them in parentheses. With lex, the following:
NAME [A-Z][A-Z0-9]*
%%
foo{NAME}? printf( "Found it\n" );
%%
will not match the string "foo" because when the macro
is expanded the rule is equivalent to "foo[A-Z][A-Z0-9]*?"
and the precedence is such that the '?' is associated with
"[A-Z0-9]*". With
flex,
the rule will be expanded to
"foo([A-Z][A-Z0-9]*)?" and so the string "foo" will match.
Note that if the definition begins with ^ or ends with $ then it is not expanded with parentheses, to allow these operators to appear in definitions without losing their special meanings. But the <s>, and <<EOF>> operators cannot be used in a flex definition.
Using -l results in the lex behavior of no parentheses around the definition.
The POSIX specification is that the definition be enclosed in parentheses.
Some implementations of lex allow a rule's action to begin on a separate line, if the rule's pattern has trailing whitespace:
%%
foo|bar<space here>
{ foobar_action(); }
flex
does not support this feature.
The lex %r (generate a Ratfor scanner) option is not supported. It is not part of the POSIX specification.
After a call to unput(), yytext is undefined until the next token is matched, unless the scanner was built using %array. This is not the case with lex or the POSIX specification. The -l option does away with this incompatibility.
The precedence of the {} (numeric range) operator is different. lex interprets "abc{1,3}" as "match one, two, or three occurrences of 'abc'", whereas flex interprets it as "match 'ab' followed by one, two, or three occurrences of 'c'". The latter is in agreement with the POSIX specification.
The precedence of the ^ operator is different. lex interprets "^foo|bar" as "match either 'foo' at the beginning of a line, or 'bar' anywhere", whereas flex interprets it as "match either 'foo' or 'bar' if they come at the beginning of a line". The latter is in agreement with the POSIX specification.
The special table-size declarations such as %a supported by lex are not required by flex scanners; flex ignores them.
The name FLEX_SCANNER is #define'd so scanners may be written for use with either flex or lex. Scanners also include YY_FLEX_MAJOR_VERSION and YY_FLEX_MINOR_VERSION indicating which version of flex generated the scanner (for example, for the 2.5 release, these defines would be 2 and 5 respectively).
The following flex features are not included in lex or the POSIX specification:
C++ scanners
%option
start condition scopes
start condition stacks
interactive/non-interactive scanners
yy_scan_string() and friends
yyterminate()
yy_set_interactive()
yy_set_bol()
YY_AT_BOL()
<<EOF>>
<*>
YY_DECL
YY_START
YY_USER_ACTION
YY_USER_INIT
#line directives
%{}'s around actions
multiple actions on a line
plus almost all of the flex flags.
The last feature in the list refers to the fact that with
flex
you can put multiple actions on the same line, separated with
semi-colons, while with
lex,
the following
foo handle_foo(); ++num_foos_seen;
is (rather surprisingly) truncated to
foo handle_foo();
flex
does not truncate the action. Actions that are not enclosed in
braces are simply terminated at the end of the line.
warning, indicates that the given rule cannot be matched because it follows other rules that will always match the same text as it. For example, in the following "foo" cannot be matched because it comes after an identifier "catch-all" rule:
[a-z]+ got_identifier();
foo got_foo();
Using
REJECT
in a scanner suppresses this warning.
warning, -s option given but default rule can be matched means that it is possible (perhaps only in a particular start condition) that the default rule (match any single character) is the only one that will match a particular input. Since -s was given, presumably this is not intended.
reject_used_but_not_detected or yymore_used_but_not_detected These errors can occur at compile time. They indicate that the scanner uses REJECT or yymore() but that flex failed to notice the fact, meaning that flex scanned the first two sections looking for occurrences of these actions and failed to find any, but somehow you snuck some in (via a #include file, for example). Use %option or %option to indicate to flex that you really do use these features.
flex a scanner compiled with -s has encountered an input string which wasn't matched by any of its rules. This error can also occur due to internal problems.
token your scanner uses %array and one of its rules matched a string longer than the YYLMAX constant (8K bytes by default). You can increase the value by #define'ing YYLMAX in the definitions section of your flex input.
scanner use Your scanner specification includes recognizing the 8-bit character 'x' and you did not specify the -8 flag, and your scanner defaulted to 7-bit because you used the -Cf or -CF table compression options. See the discussion of the -7 flag for details.
flex you used unput() to push back so much text that the scanner's buffer could not hold both the pushed-back text and the current token in yytext. Ideally the scanner should dynamically resize the buffer in this case, but at present it does not.
input buffer overflow, can't enlarge buffer because scanner uses REJECT - the scanner was working on matching an extremely large token and needed to expand the input buffer. This doesn't work with scanners that use REJECT.
fatal flex scanner internal error--end of buffer missed - This can occur in an scanner which is reentered after a long-jump has jumped out (or over) the scanner's activation frame. Before reentering the scanner, use:
yyrestart( yyin );
or, as noted above, switch to using the C++ scanner class.
too you listed more start conditions in a <> construct than exist (so you must have listed at least one of them twice).
Some trailing context patterns cannot be properly matched and generate warning messages ("dangerous trailing context"). These are patterns where the ending of the first part of the rule matches the beginning of the second part, such as "zx*/xy*", where the 'x*' matches the 'x' at the beginning of the trailing context. (Note that the POSIX draft states that the text matched by such patterns is undefined.)
For some trailing context rules, parts which are actually fixed-length are not recognized as such, leading to the abovementioned performance loss. In particular, parts using '|' or {n} (such as "foo{3}") are always considered variable-length.
Combining trailing context with the special '|' action can result in fixed trailing context being turned into the more expensive variable trailing context. For example, in the following:
%%
abc |
xyz/def
Use of unput() invalidates yytext and yyleng, unless the %array directive or the -l option has been used.
Pattern-matching of NUL's is substantially slower than matching other characters.
Dynamic resizing of the input buffer is slow, as it entails rescanning all the text matched so far by the current (generally huge) token.
Due to both buffering of input and read-ahead, you cannot intermix calls to <stdio.h> routines, such as, for example, getchar(), with flex rules and expect it to work. Call input() instead.
The total table entries listed by the -v flag excludes the number of table entries needed to determine what rule has been matched. The number of entries is equal to the number of DFA states if the scanner does not use REJECT, and somewhat greater than the number of states if it does.
REJECT cannot be used with the -f or -F options.
The flex internal algorithms need documentation.
lex(1), yacc(1), sed(1), awk(1).
John Levine, Tony Mason, and Doug Brown, Lex O'Reilly and Associates. Be sure to get the 2nd edition.
M. E. Lesk and E. Schmidt, LEX
Alfred Aho, Ravi Sethi and Jeffrey Ullman, Compilers: Addison-Wesley (1986). Describes the pattern-matching techniques used by flex (deterministic finite automata).
Thanks to the many flex beta-testers, feedbackers, and contributors, especially Francois Pinard, Casey Leedom, Robert Abramovitz, Stan Adermann, Terry Allen, David Barker-Plummer, John Basrai, Neal Becker, Nelson H.F. Beebe, benson@odi.com, Karl Berry, Peter A. Bigot, Simon Blanchard, Keith Bostic, Frederic Brehm, Ian Brockbank, Kin Cho, Nick Christopher, Brian Clapper, J.T. Conklin, Jason Coughlin, Bill Cox, Nick Cropper, Dave Curtis, Scott David Daniels, Chris G. Demetriou, Theo Deraadt, Mike Donahue, Chuck Doucette, Tom Epperly, Leo Eskin, Chris Faylor, Chris Flatters, Jon Forrest, Jeffrey Friedl, Joe Gayda, Kaveh R. Ghazi, Wolfgang Glunz, Eric Goldman, Christopher M. Gould, Ulrich Grepel, Peer Griebel, Jan Hajic, Charles Hemphill, NORO Hideo, Jarkko Hietaniemi, Scott Hofmann, Jeff Honig, Dana Hudes, Eric Hughes, John Interrante, Ceriel Jacobs, Michal Jaegermann, Sakari Jalovaara, Jeffrey R. Jones, Henry Juengst, Klaus Kaempf, Jonathan I. Kamens, Terrence O Kane, Amir Katz, ken@ken.hilco.com, Kevin B. Kenny, Steve Kirsch, Winfried Koenig, Marq Kole, Ronald Lamprecht, Greg Lee, Rohan Lenard, Craig Leres, John Levine, Steve Liddle, David Loffredo, Mike Long, Mohamed el Lozy, Brian Madsen, Malte, Joe Marshall, Bengt Martensson, Chris Metcalf, Luke Mewburn, Jim Meyering, R. Alexander Milowski, Erik Naggum, G.T. Nicol, Landon Noll, James Nordby, Marc Nozell, Richard Ohnemus, Karsten Pahnke, Sven Panne, Roland Pesch, Walter Pelissero, Gaumond Pierre, Esmond Pitt, Jef Poskanzer, Joe Rahmeh, Jarmo Raiha, Frederic Raimbault, Pat Rankin, Rick Richardson, Kevin Rodgers, Kai Uwe Rommel, Jim Roskind, Alberto Santini, Andreas Scherer, Darrell Schiebel, Raf Schietekat, Doug Schmidt, Philippe Schnoebelen, Andreas Schwab, Larry Schwimmer, Alex Siegel, Eckehard Stolz, Jan-Erik Strvmquist, Mike Stump, Paul Stuart, Dave Tallman, Ian Lance Taylor, Chris Thewalt, Richard M. Timoney, Jodi Tsai, Paul Tuinenga, Gary Weik, Frank Whaley, Gerhard Wilhelms, Kent Williams, Ken Yap, Ron Zellar, Nathan Zelle, David Zuhn, and those whose names have slipped my marginal mail-archiving skills but whose contributions are appreciated all the same.
Thanks to Keith Bostic, Jon Forrest, Noah Friedman, John Gilmore, Craig Leres, John Levine, Bob Mulcahy, G.T. Nicol, Francois Pinard, Rich Salz, and Richard Stallman for help with various distribution headaches.
Thanks to Esmond Pitt and Earle Horton for 8-bit character support; to Benson Margulies and Fred Burke for C++ support; to Kent Williams and Tom Epperly for C++ class support; to Ove Ewerlid for support of NUL's; and to Eric Hughes for support of multiple buffers.
This work was primarily done when I was with the Real Time Systems Group at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in Berkeley, CA. Many thanks to all there for the support I received.
Send comments to vern@ee.lbl.gov.