1.  Introduction.

      Lex is a program generator designed for lexical processing of character input streams. It accepts a high-level, problem oriented specification for character string matching, and produces a program in a general purpose language which recognizes regular expressions. The regular expressions are specified by the user in the source specifications given to Lex. The Lex written code recognizes these expressions in an input stream and partitions the input stream into strings matching the expressions. At the bound~aries between strings program sections provided by the user are executed. The Lex source file associates the regular expressions and the program fragments. As each expression appears in the input to the program written by Lex, the corresponding fragment is executed.

      The user supplies the additional code beyond expression matching needed to complete his tasks, possibly including code written by other generators. The program that recognizes the expressions is generated in the general purpose programming language employed for the user's program fragments. Thus, a high level expression language is provided to write the string expressions to be matched while the user's freedom to write actions is unimpaired. This avoids forcing the user who wishes to use a string manipulation language for input analysis to write processing programs in the same and often inappropriate string handling language.

      Lex is not a complete language, but rather a generator representing a new language feature which can be added to different programming languages, called ``host languages.'' Just as general purpose languages can produce code to run on different computer hardware, Lex can write code in different host languages. The host language is used for the output code generated by Lex and also for the program fragments added by the user. Compatible run-time libraries for the different host languages are also provided. This makes Lex adaptable to different environments and different users. Each application may be directed to the combination of hardware and host language appropriate to the task, the user's background, and the properties of local implementations. At present, the only supported host language is C, although Fortran (in the form of Ratfor [2] has been available in the past. Lex itself exists on UNIX, GCOS, and OS/370; but the code generated by Lex may be taken anywhere the appropriate compilers exist.

      Lex turns the user's expressions and actions (called source in this memo) into the host general-purpose language; the generated program is named yylex. The yylex program will recognize expressions in a stream (called input in this memo) and perform the specified actions for each expression as it is detected. See Figure 1.
center;
l _ r
l|c|r
l _ r
l _ r
l|c|r
l _ r
c s s
c s s.

Source -> Lex -> yylex



Input -> yylex -> Output


An overview of Lex

Figure 1

      For a trivial example, consider a program to delete from the input all blanks or tabs at the ends of lines.
center;
l l.
%%
[ \t]+$ ;
is all that is required. The program contains a %% delimiter to mark the beginning of the rules, and one rule. This rule contains a regular expression which matches one or more instances of the characters blank or tab (written \t for visibility, in accordance with the C language convention) just prior to the end of a line. The brackets indicate the character class made of blank and tab; the + indicates ``one or more ...''; and the $ indicates ``end of line,'' as in QED. No action is specified, so the program generated by Lex (yylex) will ignore these characters. Everything else will be copied. To change any remaining string of blanks or tabs to a single blank, add another rule:
center;
l l.
%%
[ \t]+$ ;
[ \t]+ printf(" ");
The finite automaton generated for this source will scan for both rules at once, observing at the termination of the string of blanks or tabs whether or not there is a newline character, and executing the desired rule action. The first rule matches all strings of blanks or tabs at the end of lines, and the second rule all remaining strings of blanks or tabs.

      Lex can be used alone for simple transformations, or for analysis and statistics gathering on a lexical level. Lex can also be used with a parser generator to perform the lexical analysis phase; it is particularly easy to interface Lex and Yacc [3]. Lex programs recognize only regular expressions; Yacc writes parsers that accept a large class of context free grammars, but require a lower level analyzer to recognize input tokens. Thus, a combination of Lex and Yacc is often appropriate. When used as a preprocessor for a later parser generator, Lex is used to partition the input stream, and the parser generator assigns structure to the resulting pieces. The flow of control in such a case (which might be the first half of a compiler, for example) is shown in Figure 2. Additional programs, written by other generators or by hand, can be added easily to programs written by Lex.
center;
l c c c l
l c c c l
l c c c l
l _ c _ l
l|c|c|c|l
l _ c _ l
l c c c l
l _ c _ l
l|c|c|c|l
l _ c _ l
l c s s l
l c s s l.
lexical grammar
rules rules
\(da \(da

Lex Yacc

\(da \(da

Input -> yylex -> yyparse -> Parsed input


Lex with Yacc

Figure 2
Yacc users will realize that the name yylex is what Yacc expects its lexical analyzer to be named, so that the use of this name by Lex simplifies interfacing.

      Lex generates a deterministic finite automaton from the regular expressions in the source [4]. The automaton is interpreted, rather than compiled, in order to save space. The result is still a fast analyzer. In particular, the time taken by a Lex program to recognize and partition an input stream is proportional to the length of the input. The number of Lex rules or the complexity of the rules is not important in determining speed, unless rules which include forward context require a significant amount of re~scanning. What does increase with the number and complexity of rules is the size of the finite automaton, and therefore the size of the program generated by Lex.

      In the program written by Lex, the user's fragments (representing the actions to be performed as each regular expression is found) are gathered as cases of a switch. The automaton interpreter directs the control flow. Opportunity is provided for the user to insert either declarations or additional statements in the routine containing the actions, or to add subroutines outside this action routine.

      Lex is not limited to source which can be interpreted on the basis of one character look~ahead. For example, if there are two rules, one looking for ab and another for abcdefg, and the input stream is abcdefh, Lex will recognize ab and leave the input pointer just before cd. . . Such backup is more costly than the processing of simpler languages.