LEX(1) LEX(1)
NAME
lex - generator of lexical analysis programs
SYNOPSIS
lex [ -tvfn ] [ file ... ]
DESCRIPTION
Lex generates programs to be used in simple lexical analysis
of text. The input files (standard input default) contain
regular expressions to be searched for, and actions written
in C to be executed when expressions are found.
A C source program, is generated, to be compiled thus:
cc lex.yy.c -ll
This program, when run, copies unrecognized portions of the
input to the output, and executes the associated C action
for each regular expression that is recognized.
The options have the following meanings.
-t Place the result on the standard output instead of in
file
-v Print a one-line summary of statistics of the generated
analyzer.
-n Opposite of -v; -n is default.
-f `Faster' compilation: don't bother to pack the result-
ing tables; limited to small programs.
EXAMPLES
This program converts upper case to lower, removes blanks at
the end of lines, and replaces multiple blanks by single
blanks.
%%
[A-Z] putchar(yytext[0]+'a'-'A');
[ ]+$
[ ]+ putchar(' ');
FILES
SEE ALSO
yacc(1), sed(1)
M. E. Lesk and E. Schmidt, `LEX-Lexical Analyzer Generator',
this manual, Volume 2