3 ms·

So, what parses the regex in the lex, flex, Jison, etc...

• vidarh 10y ago
  Most tools like that reduces any regexes to dfa's or similar, but most production compilers I've seen don't use tools like that because they're a pain to do proper error reporting for.
  • rocket69 10y ago
    Yea, we're not talking about compilers, we're talking about lexers. Regex doesn't even make a little bit of sense in a compiler world. What lexer are you working with?
    • vidarh 10y ago
      One of the main uses of lexers are in compiler. There are others, certainly, like parsing various configuration formats etc. but they tend to either use tool generated lexers that tend to use dfa's, or handwritten lexers that may or may not use regexes, but there too it's fairly uncommon to see much regex use. I custom write all of my lexers for exactly the reasons I outlined above.