Flex lexical analyser - Definition and Overview

The Flex lexical analyser generator is a free software alternative to Lex.

The description for flex as given by the flex manual.

flex is a tool for generating scanners: programs which recognized lexical patterns in text. flex reads the given input files, or its standard input if no file names are given, for a description of a scanner to generate. The description is in the form of pairs of regular expressions and C code, called rules. flex generates as output a C source file, `lex.yy.c', which defines a routine `yylex()'. This file is compiled and linked with the `-lfl' library to produce an executable. When the executable is run, it analyzes its input for occurrences of the regular expressions. Whenever it finds one, it executes the corresponding C code...

A simillar lexical scanner for C++ is flex++.

External links

• Flex Manual (http://www.gnu.org/software/flex/manual/html_node/flex_toc.html)