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LEX(1P) POSIX Programmer's Manual LEX(1P)
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux
implementation of this interface may differ (consult the
corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or
the interface may not be implemented on Linux.
lex — generate programs for lexical tasks (DEVELOPMENT)
lex [−t] [−n|−v] [file...]
The lex utility shall generate C programs to be used in lexical
processing of character input, and that can be used as an interface
to yacc. The C programs shall be generated from lex source code and
conform to the ISO C standard, without depending on any undefined,
unspecified, or implementation-defined behavior, except in cases
where the code is copied directly from the supplied source, or in
cases that are documented by the implementation. Usually, the lex
utility shall write the program it generates to the file lex.yy.c;
the state of this file is unspecified if lex exits with a non-zero
exit status. See the EXTENDED DESCRIPTION section for a complete
description of the lex input language.
The lex utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of
POSIX.1‐2008, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines, except for
Guideline 9.
The following options shall be supported:
−n Suppress the summary of statistics usually written with the
−v option. If no table sizes are specified in the lex
source code and the −v option is not specified, then −n is
implied.
−t Write the resulting program to standard output instead of
lex.yy.c.
−v Write a summary of lex statistics to the standard output.
(See the discussion of lex table sizes in Definitions in
lex.) If the −t option is specified and −n is not
specified, this report shall be written to standard error.
If table sizes are specified in the lex source code, and if
the −n option is not specified, the −v option may be
enabled.
The following operand shall be supported:
file A pathname of an input file. If more than one such file is
specified, all files shall be concatenated to produce a
single lex program. If no file operands are specified, or
if a file operand is '−', the standard input shall be used.
The standard input shall be used if no file operands are specified,
or if a file operand is '−'. See INPUT FILES.
The input files shall be text files containing lex source code, as
described in the EXTENDED DESCRIPTION section.
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of
lex:
LANG Provide a default value for the internationalization
variables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions
volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 8.2, Internationalization
Variables for the precedence of internationalization
variables used to determine the values of locale
categories.)
LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of
all the other internationalization variables.
LC_COLLATE
Determine the locale for the behavior of ranges,
equivalence classes, and multi-character collating elements
within regular expressions. If this variable is not set to
the POSIX locale, the results are unspecified.
LC_CTYPE Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of
bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte
as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments and input
files), and the behavior of character classes within
regular expressions. If this variable is not set to the
POSIX locale, the results are unspecified.
LC_MESSAGES
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the
format and contents of diagnostic messages written to
standard error.
NLSPATH Determine the location of message catalogs for the
processing of LC_MESSAGES.
Default.
If the −t option is specified, the text file of C source code output
of lex shall be written to standard output.
If the −t option is not specified:
* Implementation-defined informational, error, and warning messages
concerning the contents of lex source code input shall be written
to either the standard output or standard error.
* If the −v option is specified and the −n option is not specified,
lex statistics shall also be written to either the standard
output or standard error, in an implementation-defined format.
These statistics may also be generated if table sizes are
specified with a '%' operator in the Definitions section, as long
as the −n option is not specified.
If the −t option is specified, implementation-defined informational,
error, and warning messages concerning the contents of lex source
code input shall be written to the standard error.
If the −t option is not specified:
1. Implementation-defined informational, error, and warning messages
concerning the contents of lex source code input shall be written
to either the standard output or standard error.
2. If the −v option is specified and the −n option is not specified,
lex statistics shall also be written to either the standard
output or standard error, in an implementation-defined format.
These statistics may also be generated if table sizes are
specified with a '%' operator in the Definitions section, as long
as the −n option is not specified.
A text file containing C source code shall be written to lex.yy.c, or
to the standard output if the −t option is present.
Each input file shall contain lex source code, which is a table of
regular expressions with corresponding actions in the form of C
program fragments.
When lex.yy.c is compiled and linked with the lex library (using the
−l l operand with c99), the resulting program shall read character
input from the standard input and shall partition it into strings
that match the given expressions.
When an expression is matched, these actions shall occur:
* The input string that was matched shall be left in yytext as a
null-terminated string; yytext shall either be an external
character array or a pointer to a character string. As explained
in Definitions in lex, the type can be explicitly selected using
the %array or %pointer declarations, but the default is
implementation-defined.
* The external int yyleng shall be set to the length of the
matching string.
* The expression's corresponding program fragment, or action, shall
be executed.
During pattern matching, lex shall search the set of patterns for the
single longest possible match. Among rules that match the same number
of characters, the rule given first shall be chosen.
The general format of lex source shall be:
Definitions %% Rules %% UserSubroutines
The first "%%" is required to mark the beginning of the rules
(regular expressions and actions); the second "%%" is required only
if user subroutines follow.
Any line in the Definitions section beginning with a <blank> shall be
assumed to be a C program fragment and shall be copied to the
external definition area of the lex.yy.c file. Similarly, anything in
the Definitions section included between delimiter lines containing
only "%{" and "%}" shall also be copied unchanged to the external
definition area of the lex.yy.c file.
Any such input (beginning with a <blank> or within "%{" and "%}"
delimiter lines) appearing at the beginning of the Rules section
before any rules are specified shall be written to lex.yy.c after the
declarations of variables for the yylex() function and before the
first line of code in yylex(). Thus, user variables local to yylex()
can be declared here, as well as application code to execute upon
entry to yylex().
The action taken by lex when encountering any input beginning with a
<blank> or within "%{" and "%}" delimiter lines appearing in the
Rules section but coming after one or more rules is undefined. The
presence of such input may result in an erroneous definition of the
yylex() function.
C-language code in the input shall not contain C-language trigraphs.
The C-language code within "%{" and "%}" delimiter lines shall not
contain any lines consisting only of "%}", or only of "%%".
Definitions in lex
Definitions appear before the first "%%" delimiter. Any line in this
section not contained between "%{" and "%}" lines and not beginning
with a <blank> shall be assumed to define a lex substitution string.
The format of these lines shall be:
name substitute
If a name does not meet the requirements for identifiers in the ISO C
standard, the result is undefined. The string substitute shall
replace the string {name} when it is used in a rule. The name string
shall be recognized in this context only when the braces are provided
and when it does not appear within a bracket expression or within
double-quotes.
In the Definitions section, any line beginning with a <percent-sign>
('%') character and followed by an alphanumeric word beginning with
either 's' or 'S' shall define a set of start conditions. Any line
beginning with a '%' followed by a word beginning with either 'x' or
'X' shall define a set of exclusive start conditions. When the
generated scanner is in a %s state, patterns with no state specified
shall be also active; in a %x state, such patterns shall not be
active. The rest of the line, after the first word, shall be
considered to be one or more <blank>-separated names of start
conditions. Start condition names shall be constructed in the same
way as definition names. Start conditions can be used to restrict the
matching of regular expressions to one or more states as described in
Regular Expressions in lex.
Implementations shall accept either of the following two mutually-
exclusive declarations in the Definitions section:
%array Declare the type of yytext to be a null-terminated
character array.
%pointer Declare the type of yytext to be a pointer to a null-
terminated character string.
The default type of yytext is implementation-defined. If an
application refers to yytext outside of the scanner source file (that
is, via an extern), the application shall include the appropriate
%array or %pointer declaration in the scanner source file.
Implementations shall accept declarations in the Definitions section
for setting certain internal table sizes. The declarations are shown
in the following table.
Table: Table Size Declarations in lex
┌────────────┬────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┐
│Declaration │ Description │ Minimum Value │
├────────────┼────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┤
│%p n │ Number of positions │ 2500 │
│%n n │ Number of states │ 500 │
│%a n │ Number of transitions │ 2000 │
│%e n │ Number of parse tree nodes │ 1000 │
│%k n │ Number of packed character classes │ 1000 │
│%o n │ Size of the output array │ 3000 │
└────────────┴────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┘
In the table, n represents a positive decimal integer, preceded by
one or more <blank> characters. The exact meaning of these table size
numbers is implementation-defined. The implementation shall document
how these numbers affect the lex utility and how they are related to
any output that may be generated by the implementation should
limitations be encountered during the execution of lex. It shall be
possible to determine from this output which of the table size values
needs to be modified to permit lex to successfully generate tables
for the input language. The values in the column Minimum Value
represent the lowest values conforming implementations shall provide.
Rules in lex
The rules in lex source files are a table in which the left column
contains regular expressions and the right column contains actions (C
program fragments) to be executed when the expressions are
recognized.
ERE action
ERE action
...
The extended regular expression (ERE) portion of a row shall be
separated from action by one or more <blank> characters. A regular
expression containing <blank> characters shall be recognized under
one of the following conditions:
* The entire expression appears within double-quotes.
* The <blank> characters appear within double-quotes or square
brackets.
* Each <blank> is preceded by a <backslash> character.
User Subroutines in lex
Anything in the user subroutines section shall be copied to lex.yy.c
following yylex().
Regular Expressions in lex
The lex utility shall support the set of extended regular expressions
(see the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 9.4,
Extended Regular Expressions), with the following additions and
exceptions to the syntax:
"..." Any string enclosed in double-quotes shall represent the
characters within the double-quotes as themselves, except
that <backslash>-escapes (which appear in the following
table) shall be recognized. Any <backslash>-escape sequence
shall be terminated by the closing quote. For example,
"\01""1" represents a single string: the octal value 1
followed by the character '1'.
<state>r, <state1,state2,...>r
The regular expression r shall be matched only when the
program is in one of the start conditions indicated by
state, state1, and so on; see Actions in lex. (As an
exception to the typographical conventions of the rest of
this volume of POSIX.1‐2008, in this case <state> does not
represent a metavariable, but the literal angle-bracket
characters surrounding a symbol.) The start condition shall
be recognized as such only at the beginning of a regular
expression.
r/x The regular expression r shall be matched only if it is
followed by an occurrence of regular expression x (x is the
instance of trailing context, further defined below). The
token returned in yytext shall only match r. If the
trailing portion of r matches the beginning of x, the
result is unspecified. The r expression cannot include
further trailing context or the '$' (match-end-of-line)
operator; x cannot include the '^' (match-beginning-of-
line) operator, nor trailing context, nor the '$' operator.
That is, only one occurrence of trailing context is allowed
in a lex regular expression, and the '^' operator only can
be used at the beginning of such an expression.
{name} When name is one of the substitution symbols from the
Definitions section, the string, including the enclosing
braces, shall be replaced by the substitute value. The
substitute value shall be treated in the extended regular
expression as if it were enclosed in parentheses. No
substitution shall occur if {name} occurs within a bracket
expression or within double-quotes.
Within an ERE, a <backslash> character shall be considered to begin
an escape sequence as specified in the table in the Base Definitions
volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 5, File Format Notation ('\\', '\a',
'\b', '\f', '\n', '\r', '\t', '\v'). In addition, the escape
sequences in the following table shall be recognized.
A literal <newline> cannot occur within an ERE; the escape sequence
'\n' can be used to represent a <newline>. A <newline> shall not be
matched by a period operator.
Table: Escape Sequences in lex
┌─────────┬──────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────┐
│ Escape │ │ │
│Sequence │ Description │ Meaning │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│\digits │ A <backslash> character │ The character whose │
│ │ followed by the longest │ encoding is represented │
│ │ sequence of one, two, or │ by the one, two, or │
│ │ three octal-digit │ three-digit octal │
│ │ characters (01234567). │ integer. Multi-byte │
│ │ If all of the digits are │ characters require │
│ │ 0 (that is, │ multiple, concatenated │
│ │ representation of the │ escape sequences of this │
│ │ NUL character), the │ type, including the │
│ │ behavior is undefined. │ leading <backslash> for │
│ │ │ each byte. │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│\xdigits │ A <backslash> character │ The character whose │
│ │ followed by the longest │ encoding is represented │
│ │ sequence of hexadecimal- │ by the hexadecimal │
│ │ digit characters │ integer. │
│ │ (01234567abcdefABCDEF). │ │
│ │ If all of the digits are │ │
│ │ 0 (that is, │ │
│ │ representation of the │ │
│ │ NUL character), the │ │
│ │ behavior is undefined. │ │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│\c │ A <backslash> character │ The character 'c', │
│ │ followed by any │ unchanged. │
│ │ character not described │ │
│ │ in this table or in the │ │
│ │ table in the Base │ │
│ │ Definitions volume of │ │
│ │ POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 5, │ │
│ │ File Format Notation │ │
│ │ ('\\', '\a', '\b', '\f', │ │
│ │ '\n', '\r', '\t', '\v'). │ │
└─────────┴──────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────┘
Note: If a '\x' sequence needs to be immediately followed by a
hexadecimal digit character, a sequence such as "\x1""1"
can be used, which represents a character containing the
value 1, followed by the character '1'.
The order of precedence given to extended regular expressions for lex
differs from that specified in the Base Definitions volume of
POSIX.1‐2008, Section 9.4, Extended Regular Expressions. The order
of precedence for lex shall be as shown in the following table, from
high to low.
Note: The escaped characters entry is not meant to imply that
these are operators, but they are included in the table to
show their relationships to the true operators. The start
condition, trailing context, and anchoring notations have
been omitted from the table because of the placement
restrictions described in this section; they can only
appear at the beginning or ending of an ERE.
Table: ERE Precedence in lex
┌──────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────┐
│ Extended Regular Expression │ Precedence │
├──────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────┤
│collation-related bracket symbols │ [= =] [: :] [. .] │
│escaped characters │ \<special character> │
│bracket expression │ [ ] │
│quoting │ "..." │
│grouping │ ( ) │
│definition │ {name} │
│single-character RE duplication │ * + ? │
│concatenation │ │
│interval expression │ {m,n} │
│alternation │ | │
└──────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────┘
The ERE anchoring operators '^' and '$' do not appear in the table.
With lex regular expressions, these operators are restricted in their
use: the '^' operator can only be used at the beginning of an entire
regular expression, and the '$' operator only at the end. The
operators apply to the entire regular expression. Thus, for example,
the pattern "(^abc)|(def$)" is undefined; it can instead be written
as two separate rules, one with the regular expression "^abc" and one
with "def$", which share a common action via the special '|' action
(see below). If the pattern were written "^abc|def$", it would match
either "abc" or "def" on a line by itself.
Unlike the general ERE rules, embedded anchoring is not allowed by
most historical lex implementations. An example of embedded anchoring
would be for patterns such as "(^| )foo( |$)" to match "foo" when it
exists as a complete word. This functionality can be obtained using
existing lex features:
^foo/[ \n] |
" foo"/[ \n] /* Found foo as a separate word. */
Note also that '$' is a form of trailing context (it is equivalent to
"/\n") and as such cannot be used with regular expressions containing
another instance of the operator (see the preceding discussion of
trailing context).
The additional regular expressions trailing-context operator '/' can
be used as an ordinary character if presented within double-quotes,
"/"; preceded by a <backslash>, "\/"; or within a bracket expression,
"[/]". The start-condition '<' and '>' operators shall be special
only in a start condition at the beginning of a regular expression;
elsewhere in the regular expression they shall be treated as ordinary
characters.
Actions in lex
The action to be taken when an ERE is matched can be a C program
fragment or the special actions described below; the program fragment
can contain one or more C statements, and can also include special
actions. The empty C statement ';' shall be a valid action; any
string in the lex.yy.c input that matches the pattern portion of such
a rule is effectively ignored or skipped. However, the absence of an
action shall not be valid, and the action lex takes in such a
condition is undefined.
The specification for an action, including C statements and special
actions, can extend across several lines if enclosed in braces:
ERE <one or more blanks> { program statement
program statement }
The program statements shall not contain unbalanced curly brace
preprocessing tokens.
The default action when a string in the input to a lex.yy.c program
is not matched by any expression shall be to copy the string to the
output. Because the default behavior of a program generated by lex is
to read the input and copy it to the output, a minimal lex source
program that has just "%%" shall generate a C program that simply
copies the input to the output unchanged.
Four special actions shall be available:
| ECHO; REJECT; BEGIN
| The action '|' means that the action for the next rule is
the action for this rule. Unlike the other three actions,
'|' cannot be enclosed in braces or be
<semicolon>-terminated; the application shall ensure that
it is specified alone, with no other actions.
ECHO; Write the contents of the string yytext on the output.
REJECT; Usually only a single expression is matched by a given
string in the input. REJECT means ``continue to the next
expression that matches the current input'', and shall
cause whatever rule was the second choice after the current
rule to be executed for the same input. Thus, multiple
rules can be matched and executed for one input string or
overlapping input strings. For example, given the regular
expressions "xyz" and "xy" and the input "xyz", usually
only the regular expression "xyz" would match. The next
attempted match would start after z. If the last action in
the "xyz" rule is REJECT, both this rule and the "xy" rule
would be executed. The REJECT action may be implemented in
such a fashion that flow of control does not continue after
it, as if it were equivalent to a goto to another part of
yylex(). The use of REJECT may result in somewhat larger
and slower scanners.
BEGIN The action:
BEGIN newstate;
switches the state (start condition) to newstate. If the
string newstate has not been declared previously as a start
condition in the Definitions section, the results are
unspecified. The initial state is indicated by the digit
'0' or the token INITIAL.
The functions or macros described below are accessible to user code
included in the lex input. It is unspecified whether they appear in
the C code output of lex, or are accessible only through the −l l
operand to c99 (the lex library).
int yylex(void)
Performs lexical analysis on the input; this is the primary
function generated by the lex utility. The function shall
return zero when the end of input is reached; otherwise, it
shall return non-zero values (tokens) determined by the actions
that are selected.
int yymore(void)
When called, indicates that when the next input string is
recognized, it is to be appended to the current value of yytext
rather than replacing it; the value in yyleng shall be adjusted
accordingly.
int yyless(int n)
Retains n initial characters in yytext, NUL-terminated, and
treats the remaining characters as if they had not been read;
the value in yyleng shall be adjusted accordingly.
int input(void)
Returns the next character from the input, or zero on end-of-
file. It shall obtain input from the stream pointer yyin,
although possibly via an intermediate buffer. Thus, once
scanning has begun, the effect of altering the value of yyin is
undefined. The character read shall be removed from the input
stream of the scanner without any processing by the scanner.
int unput(int c)
Returns the character 'c' to the input; yytext and yyleng are
undefined until the next expression is matched. The result of
using unput() for more characters than have been input is
unspecified.
The following functions shall appear only in the lex library
accessible through the −l l operand; they can therefore be redefined
by a conforming application:
int yywrap(void)
Called by yylex() at end-of-file; the default yywrap() shall
always return 1. If the application requires yylex() to
continue processing with another source of input, then the
application can include a function yywrap(), which associates
another file with the external variable FILE * yyin and shall
return a value of zero.
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
Calls yylex() to perform lexical analysis, then exits. The user
code can contain main() to perform application-specific
operations, calling yylex() as applicable.
Except for input(), unput(), and main(), all external and static
names generated by lex shall begin with the prefix yy or YY.
The following exit values shall be returned:
0 Successful completion.
>0 An error occurred.
Default.
The following sections are informative.
Conforming applications are warned that in the Rules section, an ERE
without an action is not acceptable, but need not be detected as
erroneous by lex. This may result in compilation or runtime errors.
The purpose of input() is to take characters off the input stream and
discard them as far as the lexical analysis is concerned. A common
use is to discard the body of a comment once the beginning of a
comment is recognized.
The lex utility is not fully internationalized in its treatment of
regular expressions in the lex source code or generated lexical
analyzer. It would seem desirable to have the lexical analyzer
interpret the regular expressions given in the lex source according
to the environment specified when the lexical analyzer is executed,
but this is not possible with the current lex technology.
Furthermore, the very nature of the lexical analyzers produced by lex
must be closely tied to the lexical requirements of the input
language being described, which is frequently locale-specific anyway.
(For example, writing an analyzer that is used for French text is not
automatically useful for processing other languages.)
The following is an example of a lex program that implements a
rudimentary scanner for a Pascal-like syntax:
%{
/* Need this for the call to atof() below. */
#include <math.h>
/* Need this for printf(), fopen(), and stdin below. */
#include <stdio.h>
%}
DIGIT [0−9]
ID [a−z][a−z0−9]*
%%
{DIGIT}+ {
printf("An integer: %s (%d)\n", yytext,
atoi(yytext));
}
{DIGIT}+"."{DIGIT}* {
printf("A float: %s (%g)\n", yytext,
atof(yytext));
}
if|then|begin|end|procedure|function {
printf("A keyword: %s\n", yytext);
}
{ID} printf("An identifier: %s\n", yytext);
"+"|"−"|"*"|"/" printf("An operator: %s\n", yytext);
"{"[^}\n]*"}" /* Eat up one-line comments. */
[ \t\n]+ /* Eat up white space. */
. printf("Unrecognized character: %s\n", yytext);
%%
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
++argv, −−argc; /* Skip over program name. */
if (argc > 0)
yyin = fopen(argv[0], "r");
else
yyin = stdin;
yylex();
}
Even though the −c option and references to the C language are
retained in this description, lex may be generalized to other
languages, as was done at one time for EFL, the Extended FORTRAN
Language. Since the lex input specification is essentially language-
independent, versions of this utility could be written to produce
Ada, Modula-2, or Pascal code, and there are known historical
implementations that do so.
The current description of lex bypasses the issue of dealing with
internationalized EREs in the lex source code or generated lexical
analyzer. If it follows the model used by awk (the source code is
assumed to be presented in the POSIX locale, but input and output are
in the locale specified by the environment variables), then the
tables in the lexical analyzer produced by lex would interpret EREs
specified in the lex source in terms of the environment variables
specified when lex was executed. The desired effect would be to have
the lexical analyzer interpret the EREs given in the lex source
according to the environment specified when the lexical analyzer is
executed, but this is not possible with the current lex technology.
The description of octal and hexadecimal-digit escape sequences
agrees with the ISO C standard use of escape sequences.
Earlier versions of this standard allowed for implementations with
bytes other than eight bits, but this has been modified in this
version.
There is no detailed output format specification. The observed
behavior of lex under four different historical implementations was
that none of these implementations consistently reported the line
numbers for error and warning messages. Furthermore, there was a
desire that lex be allowed to output additional diagnostic messages.
Leaving message formats unspecified avoids these formatting questions
and problems with internationalization.
Although the %x specifier for exclusive start conditions is not
historical practice, it is believed to be a minor change to
historical implementations and greatly enhances the usability of lex
programs since it permits an application to obtain the expected
functionality with fewer statements.
The %array and %pointer declarations were added as a compromise
between historical systems. The System V-based lex copies the
matched text to a yytext array. The flex program, supported in BSD
and GNU systems, uses a pointer. In the latter case, significant
performance improvements are available for some scanners. Most
historical programs should require no change in porting from one
system to another because the string being referenced is null-
terminated in both cases. (The method used by flex in its case is to
null-terminate the token in place by remembering the character that
used to come right after the token and replacing it before continuing
on to the next scan.) Multi-file programs with external references to
yytext outside the scanner source file should continue to operate on
their historical systems, but would require one of the new
declarations to be considered strictly portable.
The description of EREs avoids unnecessary duplication of ERE details
because their meanings within a lex ERE are the same as that for the
ERE in this volume of POSIX.1‐2008.
The reason for the undefined condition associated with text beginning
with a <blank> or within "%{" and "%}" delimiter lines appearing in
the Rules section is historical practice. Both the BSD and System V
lex copy the indented (or enclosed) input in the Rules section
(except at the beginning) to unreachable areas of the yylex()
function (the code is written directly after a break statement). In
some cases, the System V lex generates an error message or a syntax
error, depending on the form of indented input.
The intention in breaking the list of functions into those that may
appear in lex.yy.c versus those that only appear in libl.a is that
only those functions in libl.a can be reliably redefined by a
conforming application.
The descriptions of standard output and standard error are somewhat
complicated because historical lex implementations chose to issue
diagnostic messages to standard output (unless −t was given).
POSIX.1‐2008 allows this behavior, but leaves an opening for the more
expected behavior of using standard error for diagnostics. Also, the
System V behavior of writing the statistics when any table sizes are
given is allowed, while BSD-derived systems can avoid it. The
programmer can always precisely obtain the desired results by using
either the −t or −n options.
The OPERANDS section does not mention the use of − as a synonym for
standard input; not all historical implementations support such usage
for any of the file operands.
A description of the translation table was deleted from early
proposals because of its relatively low usage in historical
applications.
The change to the definition of the input() function that allows
buffering of input presents the opportunity for major performance
gains in some applications.
The following examples clarify the differences between lex regular
expressions and regular expressions appearing elsewhere in this
volume of POSIX.1‐2008. For regular expressions of the form "r/x",
the string matching r is always returned; confusion may arise when
the beginning of x matches the trailing portion of r. For example,
given the regular expression "a*b/cc" and the input "aaabcc", yytext
would contain the string "aaab" on this match. But given the regular
expression "x*/xy" and the input "xxxy", the token xxx, not xx, is
returned by some implementations because xxx matches "x*".
In the rule "ab*/bc", the "b*" at the end of r extends r's match into
the beginning of the trailing context, so the result is unspecified.
If this rule were "ab/bc", however, the rule matches the text "ab"
when it is followed by the text "bc". In this latter case, the
matching of r cannot extend into the beginning of x, so the result is
specified.
None.
c99(1p), ed(1p), yacc(1p)
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 5, File Format
Notation, Chapter 8, Environment Variables, Chapter 9, Regular
Expressions, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information
Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open
Group Base Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open
Group. (This is POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1
applied.) In the event of any discrepancy between this version and
the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and
The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original
Standard can be obtained online at http://www.unix.org/online.html .
Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are
most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the
source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE/The Open Group 2013 LEX(1P)
Pages that refer to this page: awk(1p), cflow(1p), make(1p), yacc(1p)