Lex (lexical analyzer generator)
Lex is a program designed to generate scanners, also known as tokenizers, which recognize
lexical patterns in text. Lex is an acronym that
stands for "lexical analyzer generator." It is intended primarily for Unix-based
systems. The code for Lex was
originally developed by Eric Schmidt and Mike Lesk.
Lex can perform simple transformations by itself but its main purpose is to facilitate lexical
analysis, the processing of character sequences such as source code to
produce symbol sequences called tokens for use
as input to other programs such as parsers. Lex can
be used with a parser generator to perform lexical analysis. It is easy, for example, to interface
Lex and Yacc, an open source
program that generates code for the parser in the C programming
language.
Lex is proprietary but versions based on the original code are available as open source. These
include a streamlined version called Flex, an
acronym for "fast lexical analyzer generator," as well as components of OpenSolaris and Plan
9.
This was last updated in February 2007
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