Flex update

[Warner Losh]

On Jul 31, 2012, at 2:59 PM, Baptiste Daroussin wrote:

> 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.

Cool.  The only new feature I need from flex is the yypush/yypop_buffer_state.  That was the reason I started down this path, but punted when I discovered the delta was less than a dozen lines of code.  reflex I haven't had to evaluate to see if it brings that in or not.

Warner