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/*
HEADER: CUG nnn.nn;
TITLE: LEX - A Lexical Analyser Generator
VERSION: 1.0 for IBM-PC
DATE: Jan 30, 1985
DESCRIPTION: A Lexical Analyser Generator. From UNIX
KEYWORDS: Lexical Analyser Generator YACC C PREP
SYSTEM: IBM-PC and Compatiables
FILENAME: LEX.MEM
WARNINGS: This program is not for the casual user. It will
be useful primarily to expert developers.
CRC: N/A
SEE-ALSO: YACC and PREP
AUTHORS: Scott Guthery 11100 leafwood lane Austin, TX 78750
COMPILERS: DESMET-C
REFERENCES: UNIX Systems Manuals
*/
DECUS C LANGUAGE SYSTEM
LEX
A lexical Analyser Generator
by
Charles H. Forsyth
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1
Canada
Revised by
Robert B. Denny & Martin Minow
LEX transforms a regular-expression grammar and associated
action routines into a C function and set of tables, yielding a
table-driven lexical analyser which manages to be compact and
rapid.
DECUS Structured Languages SIG
Version of 30-Oct-82
Copyright (C) 1978, Charles H. Forsyth
Modifications Copyright (C) 1980, 1982, DECUS
General permission to copy or modify, but not for
profit, is hereby granted, provided that the above
copyright notice is included and reference made to the
fact that reproduction privileges were granted by DECUS.
The information in this document is subject to change
without notice and should not be construed as a
commitment by Digital Equipment Corporation or by DECUS.
Neither Digital Equipment Corporation, DECUS, nor the
authors assume any responsibility for the use or
reliability of this document or the described software.
This software is made available without any support
whatsoever. The person responsible for an
implementation of this system should expect to have to
understand and modify the source code if any problems
are encountered in implementing or maintaining the
compiler or its run-time library. The DECUS 'Structured
Languages Special Interest Group' is the primary focus
for communication among users of this software.
UNIX is a trademark of Bell Telephone Laboratories. RSX,
RSTS/E, RT-11 and VMS are trademarks of Digital Equipment
Corporation.
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 3
1.0 Introduction
A computer program often has an input stream which is composed
of small elements, such as a stream of characters, and which it
would like to convert to larger elements in order to process the
data conveniently. A compiler is a common example of such a
program: it reads a stream of characters forming a program, and
would like to turn this sequence of characters into a sequence
of larger items, namely identifiers, numbers, and operators, for
parsing. In a compiler, the procedures which do this are
collectively called the lexical analyser, or scanner; this
terminology will be used more generally here.
It may happen that the speed with which this transformation is
done will noticeably affect the speed at which the rest of the
program operates. It is certainly true that although such code
is rarely difficult to write, writing and debugging it is both
tedious, and time-consuming, and one typically would rather
spend the time on the hard parts of the program. It is also
true that while certain transformations are easily thought of,
they are often hard to express succinctly in the usual
general-purpose programming languages (eg, the description of a
floating-point number).
LEX is a program which tries to give a programmer a good deal of
help in this, by writing large parts of the lexical analyser
automatically, based on a description supplied by the programmer
of the items to be recognised (which are known as tokens), as
patterns of the more basic elements of the input stream. The
LEX description is very much a special-purpose language for
writing lexical analysers, and LEX is then simply a translator
for this language. The LEX language is easy to write, and the
resulting processor is compact and fast running.
The purpose of a LEX program is to read an input stream, and
recognise tokens. As the lexical analyser will usually exist as
a subroutine in a larger set of programs, it will return a
"token number", which indicates which token was found, and
possibly a "token value", which provides more detailed
information about the token (eg, a copy of the token itself, or
an index into a symbol table). This need not be the only
possibility; a LEX program is often a good description of the
structure of the whole computation, and in such a case, the
lexical analyser might choose to call other routines to perform
the necessary actions whenever a particular token is recognised,
without reference to its own caller.
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 4
2.0 The Lex Language
LEX transforms a regular-expression grammar into a deterministic
finite-state automaton that recognizes that grammar. Each rule
of the grammar is associated with an action which is to be
performed when that rule successfully matches some part of the
input data.
Because of the nature of regular expression grammars, certain
language constructions cannot be recognized by LEX programs.
Specifically, expressions with balanced parentheses cannot be
recognized. This means that LEX cannot be used to recognize all
Fortran keywords as some (DO, IF, and FORMAT, for example)
require elaborate recognition to distinguish between ambiguous
constructions.
2.1 Elementary Things
Strings, characters, sets of characters called character
classes, and operators to form these into patterns, are the
fundamental elements of the LEX language.
A string is a sequence of characters, not including newline,
enclosed in quotes, or apostrophes. Within a string, the
following escape sequences
(which are those of the C language) allow any 8-bit character to
be represented, including the escape character, quotes, and
newlines:
\n NL (012)
\r CR (015)
\b BS (010)
\t TAB (011)
\" "
\' '
\c c
\\ \
\NNN (NNN)
where NNN is a number in octal, and c is any printable
character. A string may be continued across a line by writing
the escape character before the newline.
Outside a string, a sequence of upper-case letters stands for a
sequence of the equivalent lower-case letters, while a sequence
of lower-case letters is taken as the name of a LEX expression,
and handled specially, as described below. These conventions
make the use of named expressions and the description of
lower-case keywords (the usual case on Unix) fairly convenient.
Keywords in case-independent languages, such as Fortran, require
additional effort to match, as will be noted.
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 5
An Ascii character other than one of
() {} [ * | = ; % / \ ' " -
may be used in LEX to stand for itself.
A sequence of characters enclosed by brackets ('[' and ']')
forms a character class, which stands for all those characters
within the brackets. If a circumflex ('^') follows the opening
bracket, then the class will instead stand for all those
characters but those inside the brackets. The escapes used in
strings may be used in character classes as well.
Within a character class, the construction "A-B" (where "A" and
"B" are arbitrary characters) stands for the range of characters
between "A" and "B" inclusive.
For example,
"ABC" matches "abc"
"[ABC]" matches "A" or "B" or "C"
"[A-Za-z0-9]" matches all letters and digits
Case-independent keyword recognition may be described by using
auxiliary definitions to define expressions that match either
case. For example,
a = [Aa];
b = [Bb];
...
z = [Zz];
%%
d o Matches "DO", "do", "Do", or "dO"
2.2 Putting Things Together
Several operators are provided to allow construction of a type
of pattern called a regular expression. Such expressions can be
implemented as finite-state automata (without memory or stacks).
A reference to an "occurrence" of a regular expression is
generally taken to mean an occurrence of any string matched by
that regular expression. The operators are presented in order
of decreasing priority. In all cases, operators work on either
strings or character classes, or on other regular expressions.
Any string or character class forms a regular expression which
matches whatever the string or character class stands for (as
described above).
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 6
The operator '*' applied following a regular expression forms a
new regular expression which matches an arbitrary number (ie,
zero or more) of adjacent occurrences of the first regular
expression. The operation is often referred to as (Kleene)
closure.
The operation of concatenation of two regular expressions is
expressed simply by writing the regular expressions adjacent to
each other. The resulting regular expression matches any
occurrence of the first regular expression followed directly by
an occurrence of the second regular expression.
The operator '|', alternation, written between two regular
expressions forms a regular expression which matches an
occurrence of the first regular expression or an occurrence of
the second regular expression.
Any regular expression may be enclosed in parentheses to cause
the priority of operators to be overridden in the usual manner.
A few examples should help to make all of this clear:
"[0-9]*" matches a (possibly empty) sequence of
digits.
"[A-Za-z_$][A-Za-z0-9_$]*"
matches a C identifier.
"([A-Za-z_$]|[0-9])*"
matches a C identifier, or a sequence of
digits, or a sequence of letters and
digits intermixed, or nothing.
2.3 The General Form of Lex Programs
A LEX source input file consists of three sections: a section
containing auxiliary definitions, a section containing
translations, and a section containing programs.
Throughout a LEX program, spaces, tabs, and newlines may be used
freely, and PL/1-style comments:
/* ... anything but '*/' ... */
may be used, and are treated as a space.
The auxiliary definition section must be present, separated from
following sections by the two-character sequence '%%', but may
be empty. This section allows definition of named regular
expressions, which provide the useful ability to use names of
regular expressions in the translation section, in place of
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 7
common sub-expressions, or to make that section more readable.
The translation section follows the '%%' sequence, and contains
regular expressions paired with actions which describe what the
lexical analyser should do when it discovers an occurrence of a
given regular expression in its input stream.
The program section may be omitted; if it is present it must be
separated from the translation section by the '%%' sequence. If
present, it may contain anything in general, as it is simply
tacked on to the end of the LEX output file.
The style of this layout will be familiar to users of Yacc. As
LEX is often used with that processor, it seemed reasonable to
keep to a similar format.
2.4 Auxiliary Definitions
Given the set of regular expressions forming a complete syntax,
there are often common sub-expressions. LEX allows these to be
named, defined but once, and referred to by name in any
subsequent regular expression. Note that definition must
precede use. A definition has the form:
expression_name = regular_expression ;
where a name is composed of a lower-case letter followed by a
sequence string of letters and digits, and where an underscore
is considered a letter. For example,
digit = [0-9];
letter = [a-zA-Z];
name = letter(letter|digit)*;
The semicolon is needed to resolve some ambiguities in the LEX
syntax.
Three auxiliary definitions have special meaning to LEX:
"break", "illegal", and "ignore." They are all defined as
character classes ("break = [,.?]", for example) and are used as
follows:
break An input token will always terminate if a member
of the "break" class is scanned.
illegal The "illegal" class allows simplification of
error detection, as will be described in a later
section. If this class is defined, and the
lexical analyser stops at a character that
"cannot" occur in its present context, the
analyser will output a suitable error message
and ignore the offender.
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 8
ignore This class defines a set of characters that are
ignored by the analyser's input routine.
2.5 Translations
One would like to provide a description of the action to be
taken when a particular sequence of input characters has been
matched by a given regular expression. The kind of action taken
might vary considerably, depending upon the application. In a
compiler, typical actions are: enter an identifer into a symbol
table, read and store a string, or return a particular token to
the parser. In text processing, one might wish to reproduce
most of the input stream on an output stream unchanged, making
substitutions when a particular sequence of characters is found.
In general, it is hard to predict what form the action might
take, and so, in LEX the nature of the action is left to the
user, by allowing specification, for each regular expression of
interest, C-language code to be executed when a string matching
that expression is discovered by the driving program of the
lexical analyser. An action, together with its regular
expression, is called a translation, and has the format:
regular_expression { action }
All of this may be spread across several lines. The action may
be empty, but the braces must appear.
Earlier, it was argued that most general-purpose languages are
inappropriate for writing lexical analysers, and it is important
to see that the subsequent use of such a language to form the
actions is not a contradiction. Most languages are fairly good
at expressing the actions described above (symbol table
manipulation, writing character strings, and such). Leaving
this part of the lexical analyser to those languages therefore
not only makes sense, but also ensures that decisions by the
writer of the lexical analyser generator will not unduly cramp
the user's style. However, general-purpose languages do not as
a rule provide inexpensive pattern matching facilities, or input
description formats, appropriate for describing or structuring a
lexical analyser.
Allowing a user to provide his own code is not really enough, as
he will need some help from LEX to obtain a copy of, or a
pointer to, the current token, if nothing else. LEX provides a
library of C functions which may be called to obtain controlled
access to some of the data structures used by the driving
programs of the lexical analyser. These are described in a
later section.
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 9
2.5.1 Numbers and Values -
Typically, a lexical analyser will return a value to its caller
indicating which token has been found. Within an action, this
is done by writing a C return statement, which returns the
appropriate value:
BEGIN {
return(T_BEGIN);
}
name {
lookup(token(NULL));
return(T_NAME);
}
"/" {
return('/');
}
Note that function lookup() is provided by the user program.
In many cases, other information must be supplied to its caller
by the scanner. When an identifier is recognised, for example,
both a pointer to a symbol-table entry, and the token number
T_NAME must be returned, yet the C return statement can return
but a single value. Yacc has a similar problem, and so its
lexical analyser sets an external word 'yylval' to the token
value, while the token number is returned by the scanner. LEX
uses the external 'yylval' (to be compatible), but, to make LEX
programs more readable when used alone, the name 'lexval' is set
by a #define statement to 'yylval'. For example,
name {
lexval = lookup(token(NULL));
return(T_NAME);
}
Certain token numbers are treated specially; these are
automatically defined as manifests (see section 3.2) by LEX, and
all begin with the sequence 'LEX...' so as not to clash with the
user's own names. There are two such tokens defined at present:
LEXSKIP When returned by a user's action routine,
LEXSKIP causes the lexical analyser to ignore
the current token (ie, it does not inform the
parser of its presence), and to look instead for
a new token. This may be used when a comment
sequence has been discovered, and discarded. It
is also useful when the action routine completes
processing of the token. See the discussion of
the comment() library function for an example of
its usage.
LEXERR This is returned by the lexical analyser
(function yylex()) when an unrecognizable input
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 10
sequence has been detected. By default, LEXERR
is 256. This the same as the yacc error value.
To summarise, the token number is set by the action with a
return statement, and the token value (ie, auxiliary
information) is set by assigning this value to the external
integer 'lexval'.
2.6 Declaration Sections
Declarations in the language of the actions may be included in
both the auxiliary definition section and in the translation
section. In the former case, these declarations will be
external to the lexical analyser, and in the latter case, they
will be local to the lexical analyser (ie, static, or automatic
storage). Declaration sections consist of a sequence of
declarations surrounded by the special bracketing sequences '%{'
and '%}' (as in Yacc). The characters within these brackets are
copied unchanged into the appropriate spots in the lexical
analyser program that LEX writes. The examples in appendix A
suggest how these might be used.
3.0 Using Lex from C
The present version of LEX is intended for use with C; and it
is this usage which will be described here.
3.1 The Function yylex()
The structure of LEX programs is influenced by what Yacc
requires of its lexical analyser.
To begin with, the lexical analyser must be named 'yylex', has
no parameters, and is expected to return a token number, where
that number is determined by Yacc. The token number for an
Ascii character is its Ascii value (ie, its value as a C
character constant). Named tokens, defined in yacc '%token'
statements, have a number above 256, with the particular number
accessible through a Yacc-produced #define of the given token
name as its number. Yacc also allows 'yylex' to pass a value to
the Yacc action routines, by assigning that value to the
external 'yylval'.
LEX thus provides a lexical analyser function named 'yylex',
which interprets tables constructed by the LEX program returning
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 11
the token number returned by the actions it performs. Values
assigned to lexval are available in 'yylval', so that use with
Yacc is straightforward.
A value of zero is returned by 'yylex' at end-of-file, and in
the absence of a return statement in an action, a non-zero value
is returned. If computation is performed entirely by the
lexical analyser, then a suitable main program would be
main()
{
while (yylex()) ;
}
3.2 Serial Re-Use of yylex()
The yylex() function contains several variables which are
statically initialized at compile time. Once yylex() sees an
EOF (-1) input character, it will continue to return NULL. If
yylex() is to be used inside a loop which processes multiple
files, it must be re-initialized at the beginning of each new
file with a call to the LEX library routine llinit(). For
example (slightly extending the previous example):
main()
{
getfilelist();
for(file = first; file != last; file = next)
{
llinit();
while (yylex());
}
printf("All files done\n");
}
The call to llinit() is unnecessary if yylex() is to process
only one file, or is kept from seeing an EOF input character.
3.3 The Lex Table File
In the absence of instructions to the contrary (see below), LEX
reads a given LEX language file, (from the standard input, if an
input file has not been specified) and produces a C program file
'lextab.c' which largely consists of tables which are then
interpreted by 'yylex()' (which is in the LEX library). The
actions supplied by the user in each translation are combined
with a switch statement into a single function, which is called
by the table interpreter when a particular token is found. The
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 12
contents of the program section of the LEX file are added at the
end of the output file (lextab.c by default). Normally, LEX
also inserts the lines
#include <stdio.h>
#include <lex.h>
at the top of the file; this causes declarations required by
the standard I/O library and by LEX to be included when the C
program is compiled.
3.4 Analyzers Which Don't Use "Standard I/O"
With the current release, LEX supports the generation of
analyzers which may be incorporated into programs which do not
use the "standard I/O" library. By setting the "-s" switch, as
shown below, the generation of the "#include <stdio.h>" line is
supressed. All references to standard I/O specific files and
stdio.h have been removed from the LEX library (described in a
later section), with the exception of lexgetc(), lexerror(),
mapch() and lexecho(), which are standard I/O dependent.
The declaration of yylex()'s input file iov pointer "lexin" now
resides in LEXGET.C (lexgetc()). The code which defaults lexin
to stdin has been moved from yylex() to the table file. yylex()
now calls the routine llstin(), which is generated into the
table file. There are no longer any hardwired references to the
variable "lextab", the default table name. Instead, LEX
generates a call to lexswitch() in llstin(), which initializes
yylex() to use the table whose name was given in a "-t" or "-e"
option in LEX's command line. If neither was given, the default
name "lextab" is used. Once the initial table has been set up,
further automatic calls to lexswitch() are supressed, allowing
the user to manually switch tables as before.
In addition, If the "-s" switch is not given (i.e., normal use
with standard I/O), llstin() defaults lexin to stdin. If "-s"
is given, llstin() is generated to do the lexswitch() mentioned
above only. In any case, yylex() contains no references to the
standard I/O system.
What all of this means is that under normal operation, you won't
notice any change in LEX's characteristics. In addition, you
may use the "-e" ("easy") switch, which will generate a C output
file and LEX tables which (conveniently) have the same name as
the input file, and everything will get set up automagically.
If you specify the "-s" switch, the table file will contain no
references to the standard I/O package, and you may use any of
the lexlib routines except lexgetc(), lexerror(), mapch() or
lexecho().
Don't forget that you must supply your own startup routine
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 13
"$$main" if you do not want the standard I/O library. With a
bit of care in this regard, it will be possible to link your
program with the C library without dragging in any I/O modules.
This prevents your having to build another library in order to
access non-I/O library functions. Just make the reference to
the C library the last one given to the linker or taskbuilder so
that only those routines which have not already been found are
pulled from CLIB.
NOTE
Programs that use LEX-generated analyzers and do not use
the standard I/O package must supply their own lexgetc()
and lexerror() routines. Failure to do so will result
in undefined globals.
3.5 Operating LEX
LEX normally reads the grammar from the standard input, writing
the C program to the file 'lextab.c'. It may be further
controlled by using the following flags upon invocation:
-i filename The grammar is read from 'filename'.
-o filename The analyser is written to 'filename'.
-t tablename The default finite-state automaton is
named lextab (and it is, by default,
written to file 'lextab.c'). The -t
switch causes the internal tables to be
named 'tablename' and, if the -o switch
is not given, written to file
'tablename.c'. This is necessary if the
processor-switching capabilities
described in a later section are to be
used.
-e name "Easy" command line. "-e name" is
equivalent to typing
-i name.LXI -o name.C -t name
Do not include device names or file
extensions on the "easy" command line.
-v [filename] Internal state information is written to
'filename.' If not present, state
information is written to file
'lex.out.'
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 14
-d Enable various debugging printouts.
-s Generate analyzer without references to
standard I/O
The command line for compilation of the table file should
contain no surprises:
cc -c -O lextab.c (on Unix)
xcc lextab -a (on Dec operating systems)
but when one is producing the running program, one must be
careful to include the necessary libraries. On Unix, the proper
sequence is:
cc userprog.o lextab.o -ll -lS
The '-ll' causes the LEX library (described below) to be
searched, and the '-lS' causes the Standard I/O library to be
used; both libraries are required. If Yacc is used as well,
the library '-ly' should be included before the '-ll'. The
actual order and content of the rest of the command line is
determined by the user's own requirements.
If using the Decus C compiler, the lexical analyser built by LEX
is linked with c:lexlib.
The complete process (assuming the Decus compiler running on
RSTS/E in RT11 mode) is thus:
mcr lex -i grammar.lxi -o grammar.c ! Build analyser
cc grammar ! Compile the
as grammar ! grammar table
link out=in,grammar,c:lexlib,c:suport,c:clib/b:2000
4.0 The Lex Library
All programs using grammars generated by LEX must be linked
together with the LEX library. On Unix, this is '/lib/libl.a'
(or '-ll' on the cc command line) and on DEC operating systems,
C:LEXLIB (LB:[1,1]LEX.OLB for RSX). It contains routines which
are either essential or merely useful to users of LEX. The
essential routines include a routine to obtain a copy of the
current token, and a routine to switch to a different set of
scanning tables. Routines of the second, useful, class perform
functions which might well be written by the user himself, but
are there to save him the bother; including a routine to
process various forms of comments and a routine to transform
numbers written in arbitrary bases. Both sets of routines are
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 15
expected to grow as LEX sees use.
Those functions which produce diagnostics do so by calling
lexerror(), which is called as
lexerror(string, arg1, ..., argN)
and is expected to write its arguments (likely using the "remote
format" facility of the fprintf() function), followed by a
newline, on some output stream. A Lexerror() function is
included in the LEX library, but a user is free to include his
own. The routine in the LEX library is standard I/O specific.
NOTE
The VAX/VMS native C library does not support remote
formats. The Lexerror function in the LEX library
conditionally compiles to support a call to lexerror()
with only an error message string. Remote formats are
supported under Decus C. Learn to use them, they are
very nice!
4.0.1 Comment -- skip over a comment -
comment(delim)
char delim[];
Comment() may be called by a translation when the sequence of
characters which mark the start of a comment in the given syntax
has been recognised by LEX. It takes a string which gives the
sequence of characters which mark the end of a comment, and
skips over characters in the input stream until this sequence is
found. Newlines found while skipping characters cause the
external 'yyline' to be incremented; an unexpected end-of-file
produces a suitable diagnostic. Thus, 'comment("*/")' matches
C-style comments, and 'comment("\n")' matches as-style comments.
There are other methods of handling comments in LEX; the
comment() function is usually the best with regard to both space
and time.
4.0.2 Gettoken -- obtain a copy of token -
gettoken(buf, sizeof(buf))
char buf[];
Gettoken() takes the address of a character buffer, and its size
in bytes, and copies the token most recently matched by LEX into
the buffer. A null byte is added to mark the end of the token
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 16
in the buffer, but, as null bytes are legitimate characters to
LEX, the true length of the token is returned by gettoken().
For example, the following function calls lexlength() to obtain
the length of a token. It then calls the storage allocator to
allocate sufficient storage for the token and copies the token
into the allocated area.
char *
save()
/*
* Save current token, return a pointer to it
*/
{
register char *tbuffer;
register int len;
register char *tend;
extern char *token();
extern char *copy();
len = lexlength() + 1;
if (tbuffer = malloc(len)) == NULL)
error("No room for token");
gettoken(tbuffer, len);
return(tbuffer);
}
4.0.3 Integ -- long integer, any base -
long
integ(nptr, base)
char *nptr;
Integ() converts the Ascii string at 'nptr' into a long integer,
which it returns. Conversion stops at the first non-digit,
where the digits are taken from the class "[0-9a-zA-Z]" as
limited by the given 'base'. Integ() does not understand signs,
nor are blanks or tabs allowed in the string.
4.0.4 Lexchar -- steal character -
lexchar()
Lexchar() returns the next character from the LEX input stream.
(This means that LEX will no longer see it.) LEX uses a
look-ahead buffer to handle complex languages, and this function
takes this into account.
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 17
4.0.5 Lexecho -- write token to a file (STDIO ONLY) -
lexecho(fp);
FILE *fp;
Lexecho() may be called by a LEX action routine to write the
current token to a specified file.
NOTE
Programs using analyzers built with LEX's "-s" switch
must supply their own lexecho() function if needed.
4.0.6 Lexgetc -- supply characters to yylex (STDIO ONLY) -
lexgetc()
Lexgetc() is called by the lexical analyser to obtain characters
from its input stream. The version in the library is dependent
on the standard I/O package, and is:
FILE *lexin; /* Declare iov address locally */
lexgetc()
{
return(getc(lexin));
}
If lexin is NULL when yylex() is entered, it will be assigned to
stdin. This is done by yylex() calling the function llstin(),
which is generated in the table file. Unless the "-s" switch is
given to LEX, the llstin() function assigns lexin to stdin if
lexin is NULL. If the "-s" switch was given, the llstin()
routine is a no-op. The user may provide his own version of
lexgetc() to pre-process the data to the lexical analyser. An
example of this is shown in the appendix.
NOTE
Programs using analyzers built with LEX's "-s" switch
must supply their own lexgetc() function, and "lexin"
has no meaning in this context.
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 18
4.0.7 Lexlength -- return length of a token. -
lexlength();
Lexlength() may be called by a LEX action routine to obtain the
length of the current token in bytes. An example of this is
shown in the description of gettoken().
4.0.8 Lexpeek -- examine character -
lexpeek()
Lexpeek() performs a function similar to that of Lexchar(), but
does not have the side-effect of removing the character from
LEX's view.
4.0.9 Lexswitch -- switch scanning tables -
struct lextab *
lexswitch(newtb)
struct lextab *newtb;
Lexswitch() is called to cause LEX to use a different scanning
table; it returns a pointer to the one previously in use. This
facility is useful if certain objects of the language (eg,
strings in C) have a fairly complicated structure of their own
which cannot be handled within the translation section of the
LEX description of the larger language.
4.0.10 Llinit -- Reinitialize yylex() -
llinit()
Llinit() is a function which resets the state of yylex() to it's
cold-start condition. Several of yylex()'s variables are
initialized at compile time, and must be reinitialized if it is
to be serially re-used. An example of this is where yylex() is
repeatedly called inside a loop which processes multiple input
files. Each time a new file is started, llinit() must be called
before the first call to yylex() for the new file.
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 19
4.0.11 Mapch -- Handle C escapes within strings (STDIO ONLY) -
int mapch(delim, esc)
char delim;
char esc;
Mapch() is a function which handles C "escape" characters such
as "\n" and "\nnn". It will scan off the entire escape sequence
and return the equivalent ASCII code as an integer. It is meant
for use with YACC while scanning quoted strings and character
constants.
If it encounters EOF while scanning, it calls lexerror() to
print an error message warning of "Unterminated string". If a
normal character is read, it returns the ASCII value. If
"delim" (usually " or ') is read, it returns EOF. If a newline
(ASCII linefeed) is read, it increments the global "yyline" and
calls itself recursively for the next line of input. It may use
the ungetc() function to back up in the input stream.
NOTE
This routine is very application-specific for use by LEX
and YACC when they are working together. You should
read the code in MAPCH.C before using this function.
4.0.12 Token -- get pointer to token -
char *
token(end_pointer)
char **end_pointer;
Token() locates the first byte of the current token and returns
its address. It takes an argument which is either NULL or a
pointer to a character pointer; if the latter, that pointer is
set to point to the byte after the last byte of the current
token. Token() is slightly faster, and more convenient than
gettoken() for those cases where the token is only one or two
bytes long.
5.0 Error Detection and Recovery
If a character is detected in the input stream which cannot be
added to the last-matched string, and which cannot start a
string, then that character is considered illegal by LEX. LEX
may be instructed to return a special 'error' token, or to write
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 20
a diagnostic with lexerror(). At present, the former is the
default action.
The token LEXERR is a special value which is recognised by Yacc,
and causes it to start its own error recovery. It is defined by
the header file lex.h for use by other programs.
Often, it makes more sense to simply type a suitable diagnostic,
and continue by ignoring the offending character. It is fairly
easy to cause LEX to do this, by including the auxiliary
definition:
illegal = [\0-\377];
which defines a character class "illegal" which is handled
specially by LEX. If the character that is causing the trouble
is a member of that character class (and in the example, all
characters are), then LEX will write a diagnostic, and ignore
it; otherwise, it will return the special token LEXERR
More comprehensive techniques may be added as they become
apparent.
6.0 Ambiguity and Look-ahead
Many computer languages have ambiguous grammars in that an input
token may represent more than one logical entity. This section
discusses the way in which grammars built by LEX resolve
ambiguous input, as well as a way for the grammar to assign
unique meaning to a token by looking ahead in the input stream.
6.1 Resolving Ambiguities
A LEX program may be ambiguous, in the sense that a particular
input string or strings might be matched by the regular
expression of more than one translation. Consider,
[a-z] { putchar(*token(NULL)); }
aaa* { printf("abc"); }
in which the string 'aa' is matched by both regular expressions
(twice by the first, and once by the second). Also, the string
'aaaaaa' may be matched in many different ways. LEX has to
decide somehow which actions should be performed.
(Alternatively, it could produce a diagnostic, and give up. As
it happens, LEX never does this.)
Consider a second example,
letter = [a-z];
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 21
%%
A(letter)* { return(1); }
AB(letter)* { return(2); }
which attempts to distinguish sequences of letters that begin
with 'a' from similar sequences that begin with 'ab'. These two
examples illustrate two different kinds of ambiguity, and the
following indicates how LEX resolves these.
In the first example, it seems likely that the intent was to
have both 'aa' and 'aaaaaa' perform the second action, while all
single letters 'a' cause the first action to be performed. LEX
does this by ensuring that the longest possible part of the
input stream will be used to determine the match. Thus,
< { return(LESS); }
<= { return(LESSEQ); }
or
digit(digit)* { return(NUMBER); }
letter(letter|digit)* { return(NAME); }
would work as one might expect.
In the second example, the longest-string need not work. On the
string "abb9", either action could apply, and so another rule
must be followed. This states that if, after the longest-string
rule has been applied, there remains an ambiguity, then the
action which appears first in the LEX program file is to be
performed. As the second example is written, the second action
will never be performed. It would have been written as:
letter = [a-z];
%%
AB(letter)* { return(1); }
A(letter)* { return(2); }
The two rules together completely determine a string.
At present, LEX produces no diagnostic in either case; it
merely applies the rules and proceeds. In the case where
priority is given to the first-appearing rule, it might be a
good idea to produce a diagnostic.
6.2 Look-ahead
Some facility for looking ahead in the input stream is sometimes
required. (This facility might also be regarded as a way for
the programmer to more closely control LEX's ambiguity
resolution process.) For example, in C, a name followed by "("
is to be contextually declared as an external function if it is
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 22
otherwise undefined.
In Pascal, look-ahead is required to determine that
123..1234
is an integer 123, followed by the subrange symbol "..",
followed by the integer 1234, and not simply two real numbers
run together.
In both of these cases, the desire is to look ahead in the input
stream far enough to be able to make a decision, but without
losing tokens in the process.
A special form of regular expression is used to indicate
look-ahead:
re1 '/' re2 '{' action '}'
where 're1' and 're2' are regular expressions. The slash is
treated as concatenation for the purposes of matching incoming
characters; thus both 're1' and 're2' must match adjacently for
the action to be performed. 'Re1' indicates that part of the
input string which is the token to be returned, while 're2'
indicates the context. The characters matched by 're2' will be
re-read at the next call to yylex(), and broken into tokens.
Note that you cannot write:
name = re1 / re2;
The look-ahead operator must be part of the rule. It is not
valid in definitions.
In the first example, the look-ahead operator would be used as:
name / "(" {
if (name undefined)
declare name a global function;
}
name { /* usual processing for identifiers */
}
In the second example, the range construction would be parsed as
follows:
digit = [0-9];
int = digit(digit)*;
%%
int / ".." int { /* Start of a range */
".." int { /* End of a range */
Note that right-context is not sufficient to handle certain
types of ambiguity, as is found in several places in the Fortran
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 23
language. For example,
do i = 1 Is an assignment statement
do i = 1, 4 Is a DO statement
It is not sufficient to use right-context scanning to look for
the comma, as it may occur within a parenthesized
sub-expression:
do i = j(k,l) Is an assignment statement
In Fortran, similar problems exist for IF and FORMAT statements,
as well as counted (Hollerith) string constants. All of these
require a more powerful grammar than is possible with LEX
regular-expressions.
7.0 Multiple Scanning Tables; Processor Switching
Even a fairly simple syntax may be difficult, or impossible, to
describe and process with a single set of translations. An
example of this may be found in C, where strings, which are part
of the language, have quite a different structure, and in order
to process them, either a function must be called which reads
and parses the input stream for itself, or some mechanism within
LEX must be invoked to cause a (usually massive) change of
state.
LEX does provide such a facility, which is known, after AED, as
'processor switching'. Yylex() locates its tables through a
pointer; if one simply changes the pointer to point at a new
set of tables, one will have effected the required change of
state. The LEX library function lexswitch(), which is described
elsewhere in this guide, arranges to do this; it also returns
the old value of the pointer so that it may be restored by a
later call to Lexswitch. Thus, scanning environments may be
stacked, or not, as the user requires.
7.1 Creation of a Processor
It should be clear that if all the tables produced by LEX from a
user's translation file have the same name, someone (the loader)
is bound to object. Some method must be provided to change the
name of the table.
This is done by an option flag to the LEX command:
-t name
will cause the scanning table to be declared as
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 24
struct lextab name;
so that it may be passed to LEXswitch:
lexswitch(&name);
LEX also writes the program file to the file "name.c" rather
than to "lextab.c."
NOTE
If you use the "easy" command line ("-e name") when
running LEX, the output file and table names will
correspond nicely. Re-read the section on operating LEX
for more details.
8.0 Conclusion
LEX seems to handle most lexical analysis tasks easily. Indeed,
LEX may be more generally used to write commands of a
text-processing nature; an example of such usage may be found
in an appendix. LEX programs are far easier to write than the
equivalent C programs, and generally consume less space
(although there is an initial overhead for the more general
table-interpreter program). The encoding suggested in [4]
achieves a reasonable compromise between table size, and
scanning speed. Certainly lexical analysers are less tedious
and time-consuming to write.
It is expected that most change in the future will be through
additions to the LEX library. The LEX language may change
slightly to accomodate common kinds of processing (eg, break
characters), or to extend its range of application. Neither
kind of change should affect existing LEX programs.
LEX produces tables and programs for the C language. The tables
are in a very simple (and stylised) format, and when LEX copies
the action routines or the program section, the code might as
well be Fortran for all it cares. One could write Unix filters
to translate the very simple C format tables into other
languages, allowing LEX to be used with a larger number of
languages, with little extra development cost. This seems a
likely future addition.
Because of the look-ahead necessary to implement the "longest
string match" rule, LEX is unsuitable for interactive programs
whose overall structure is:
for (;;) {
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page 25
prompt_user();
get_input();
process();
print_output();
}
If these are rewritten as LEX-generated grammars, the user will
be confused by the fact the second input datum must be entered
before the first is processed. It is possible to solve this
dilemna by rewriting function lexgetc() to return an
"end-of-line" character until processing is complete for that
line. An example is shown in the Appendix.
9.0 Acknowledgements
LEX is based on a processor of the same name at Bell
Laboratories, which also runs under Unix [3], and, more
distantly, on AED-0 [1]. This version of LEX was based on the
description and suggestions of [4], although the implementation
differs significantly in a number of ways.
10.0 References
1. Johnson, W.L., et. al., "Automatic generation of
efficient lexical analysers using finite state
techniques", CACM Vol. 11, No. 12, pp. 805-813, 1968.
2. Johnson, S.C., "Yacc -- Yet Another Compiler-Compiler",
CSTR-32, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, New
Jersey, 1974.
3. Lesk, M.E., "Lex - a lexical analyser generator",
CSTR-39, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, New
Jersey, 1975.
4. Aho, A.V., Ullman, J.D., Principles of Compiler Design,
Addison-Wesley, Don Mills, Ontario, 1977.
APPENDIX A
LEX SOURCE GRAMMAR
The following is a grammar of LEX programs which generally
follows Bacus-Naur conventions. In the rules, "||" stands for
alternation (choose one or the other). Other graphic text
stands for itself. Several grammar elements have special
meaning:
<anything> Any text not including the following
grammar element (either a literal or
end-of-file).
<nothing> Nothing -- used for optional rule
elements.
<name> A variable name.
<char_class> A character class specifier.
<string> A string (text inclosed in '"').
<EOF> The end of the input file.
This grammar was abstracted from the Yacc grammar used to
describe LEX.
program :== aux_section trans_section
aux_section ::= auxiliaries %%
|| %%
auxiliaries ::= auxiliaries aux_def
|| aux_def
aux_def ::= name_def = reg_exp ;
|| %{ <anything> %}
name_def ::= <name>
reg_exp ::= <char_class>
|| <string>
|| <name>
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page A-2
LEX Source Grammar
|| reg_exp *
|| reg_exp | reg_exp
|| reg_exp reg_exp
|| ( reg_exp )
trans_section ::= translations
|| <nothing>
translations ::= translations translation
|| translation
translation ::= pattern action
|| %{ <anything> %}
|| %% <anything> <EOF>
pattern ::= reg_exp / reg_exp
|| reg_exp
APPENDIX B
SOME SMALL EXAMPLES
The following example illustrates the use of the look-ahead
operator, and various other of the nuances of using LEX.
B.1 A Complete Command
The C programming language has had two different ways of writing
its assignment operators. The original method was to write a
binary operator immediately following the ordinary assignment
operator, forming a compound operator. Thus 'a =+ b' caused the
value of 'a+b' to be assigned to 'a'. Similarly,
=- =/ =% =* =<< =>> =| =& =^
were written for the assignment operators corresponding to
subtraction, division, modulus, multiplication, left shift,
right shift, logical OR, logical AND, and exclusive OR. In the
current version of the language, the binary operator is written
to the left of the assignment operator, to remove potential
ambiguity.
The LEX program "ctoc" is a filter which converts programs
written in the older style into programs written in the newer
style. It uses the look-ahead operator, and the various
dis-ambiguating rules to ensure that sequences like
a==-1 a=++b
remain unchanged.
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page B-2
Some Small Examples
/*
* ctoc.lxi -- Convert old C operators to new C form
*
* Adapted from example in C. Forsythe's LEX manual.
*
* NOTE:
* Forsythe's program put an entire comment into the token
* buffer. Either define a huge token buffer for my typical
* monster comments, or filter text within comments as if
* it were real C code. This is what I did. So =+ inside
* a comment will get changed to +=, etc. Note tnat you
* may use the commen() function in LEXLIB if you want the
* comments eaten. I wanted 'em in the output.
* by
* Bob Denny
* 31-Feb-81
*/
%{
char tbuf[80]; /* Token buffer */
main()
{
while (yylex())
;
}
%}
any = [\0-\177];
nesc = [^\\];
nescquote = [^\\"];
nescapost = [^\\'];
schar = "\\" any | nescquote;
cchar = "\\" any | nescapost;
string = '"' schar* '"';
charcon = "'" cchar* "'";
%%
"=" ( << | >> | "*" | + | - | "/" | "%" | "&" | "|" | "^" )
{
gettoken(tbuf, sizeof tbuf);
printf("%s=",tbuf+1);
}
/*
* The following will overflow the token buffer on any but a
* small comment:
*/
/*********
"/*" ([^*] | "*"[^/])* "*/"
{
lexecho(stdout);
}
**********/
[<=>!]"=" | "="[<>]
{
lexecho(stdout);
}
"=" / ( ++ | -- )
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page B-3
Some Small Examples
{
lexecho(stdout);
}
charcon
{
lexecho(stdout);
}
string
{
lexecho(stdout);
}
[\0-\377]
{
lexecho(stdout);
}
Assuming the Decus compiler running on RSTS/E in RT11 mode, the
above program would be built and executed as follows:
mcr lex -i ctoc.lxi -o ctoc.c
cc ctoc/v
as ctoc/d
link ctoc=ctoc,c:lexlib,c:suport,c:clib/b:2000
mcr ctoc <old.c >new.c
B.2 Interactive Lexical Analysis
The following program reads words from the terminal, counting
each as they are entered. The interaction with the operator is
"natural" in the sense that processing for one line is complete
before the next line is input. To implement this program, it
was necessary to include a special version of lexgetc() which
returns <NULL> if the current line has been completely
transmitted to the parser. Because the parser must still have
some look-ahead context, it will return the "end-of-line" token
twice at the beginning of processing. This required some
additional tests in the main program.
/*
* Count words -- interactively
*/
white = [\n\t ]; /* End of a word */
eol = [\0]; /* End of input line */
any = [!-~]; /* All printing char's */
illegal = [\0-\377]; /* Skip over junk */
%{
char line[133];
char *linep = &line;
int iseof = 0;
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page B-4
Some Small Examples
int wordct = 0;
#define T_EOL 1
main()
{
register int i;
while ((i = yylex()) != 0) {
/*
* If the "end-of-line" token is
* returned AND we're really at
* the end of a line, read the
* next line. Note that T_EOL is
* returned twice when the program
* starts because of the nature of
* the look-ahead algorithms.
*/
if (i == T_EOL && !is_eof
&& *linep == 0) {
printf("* ");
fflush(stdout);
getline();
}
}
printf("%d words\n", wordct);
}
%}
%%
any(any)* {
/*
* Write each word on a
* seperate output line.
*/
lexecho(stdout);
printf("\n");
wordct++;
return(LEXSKIP);
}
eol {
return(T_EOL);
}
white(white)* {
return(LEXSKIP);
}
%%
getline()
/*
* Read a line for lexgetc()
*/
{
is_eof = (fgets(line, sizeof line, stdin)
== NULL);
linep = &line;
}
lexgetc()
/*
A Lexical Analyser Generator Page B-5
Some Small Examples
* Homemade lexgetc -- return zero while at the
* end of an input line or EOF at end of file. If
* more on this line, return the next byte.
*/
{
return( (is_eof) ? EOF
: (*linep == 0) ? 0
: *linep++);
}
