tutorial

A Pragmatic Introduction to Abstract LanguageAnalysis with Flex and Bison under WindowsDRAFTDr. Christophe MeudecOctober 9, 2001AbstractThisintroductionwillallowyoutomakethemostoftwopowerfultoolsfor the analysis of abstract languages such as programming languages.The aim of this introduction is to get you up and running as quickly aspossible with Flex and Bison, it is in no way a complete description ofthese tools.Afterreadingthisintroductionyoushouldbeabletounderstand,mod-ify and create speci cations les for the creation of reliable and eŽcientlexical analysers and parsers.Keywords: ex, bison, programming language analysis, parsing, lexical anal-ysis1 Introduction1.1 Objectives and RationaleThe primary aim of this introduction is to give the reader enough informationto make the most of Flex and Bison in a relatively short period of time. Theautomatic analysis of data that is given in a prescribed text format requires thedevelopment of a lexical analyser and/or of a parser. While lexical analysersand parsers can of course be written by hand, it has long been knownthat mostusefullexicalanalysersandparsersfollowthesamedesignandcanbegeneratedautomatically given a description of their intended behaviour. Thus it is nearlyalwaysthecasethattheprogrammerdoesnothavetowriteadedicatedanalyseror parser but instead can avoid this tedious task using generating tools such asFlex and Bison. The result will most likely be more reliable and eŽcient ...