FWIW I encountered re2c in the Ninja lexer https://github.com/ninja-build/ninja/blob/master/src/lexer.in.cc#L123 https://github.com/ninja-build/ninja/blob/mast

FWIW I encountered re2c in the Ninja lexer https://github.com/ninja-build/ninja/blob/master/src/lexer.in.cc#L123 https://github.com/ninja-build/ninja/blob/master/src/lexer.i... and then used it for my own huge shell lexer: The Oil Lexer: Introduction and Recap http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/12/15.html http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/12/15.html The nice thing about it is that it doesn't impose any constraints on the structure of your code. lex/flex probably have options not generate piles of messy C code with global variables at this point, but IMO there's no reason not to use re2c instead, so it's moot.