Flex update

[Baptiste Daroussin]

On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 04:23:00AM -0400, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 10:42:15PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
> > Is there some reason that flex has never been updated from 2.4.5a?
> 
> It depends on what you mean by "updated".
> 
> The usual answer is the sourceforge project.
> It's not exactly an "update", since it breaks existing applications,
> and its maintainer is unwilling to address those problems.
> 
> Debian for instance has old/new versions.
> 
> I don't use either - see
> 
> 	http://invisible-island.net/reflex/
> 
> (earlier this year, Baptiste Daroussin suggested some additional changes
> to this version, along the lines of the ones I incorporated into byacc).
> 
> -- 
> Thomas E. Dickey <dickey at invisible-island.net>
> http://invisible-island.net
> ftp://invisible-island.net

reflex seems like a better solution for us than upgrade to flex (from
sourceforge) imho, flex depends on m4 and on some gnu m4 extensions, normally
our version of m4 is now compatible with gnu m4 (I added some missing bits
recently) but still I don't think having flex using m4 is a good idea, and
reflex looks cleaner in that area.

reflex is just missing imho one feature from flex (sourceforge version) that is
ability to generate reentrant code.

I already imported byacc from invisible island, I was supposed to add some
"fixes" to byacc (bde has spotted) and provide them to Thomas, sorry I have
been slacking in that area recently.

Once that is done, I have on my todo list importing reflex to replace our flex.
I did feel any hurry in that area, as I don't think we are missing too much
features, is there one you are particulary interested on? I was waiting for
reflex to support reentrant code generation before importing it.

regards,
Bapt
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