[RFC]: flex/lex update

[Thomas Dickey]

On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 10:06:23AM +0300, Stanislav Sedov wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:01:28 +0100
> Roman Divacky <rdivacky at freebsd.org> mentioned:
> 
> > hi
> > 
> > I noticed there is an update to lex/flex. The version in our tree
> > is ancient and there seems to be some updates (http://flex.sourceforge.net/)
> > 
> > Can someone comment on the state of lex in our tree? It's not considered
> > a contributed software (it resides in usr.bin) but it was taken from elsewhere.
> > 
> > what is our position? is it preferable for me to work on updating it or
> > just fixing the one bug I ran into?
> 
> Are there any benefits in updating? Does it worth the hassle? We have this
> version of flex in ports for those who needs extended features.

The newer version will break some existing programs (for instance, the
last time I looked, it had broken the %option lines) - which is one of
the reasons I chose to work on "old" flex:

	http://invisible-island.net/reflex/reflex.html
 
> If there're no critical echancements/fixes in the updated flex version I'd
> prefer to stay with what we have and just fix the bugs encountered locally.

You've probably best off leaving the base flex as-is (ports are always a
different matter).

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net
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