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Lex and Yacc (Nutshell Handbooks) (Paperback)

~ (Author), W. Anthony Mason (Author), Doug Brown (Author)

4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (35 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

If you need to parse or process text data in Linux or Unix, this useful book explains how to use flex and bison to solve your problems quickly. flex & bison is the long-awaited sequel to the classic O'Reilly book, lex & yacc. In the nearly two decades since the original book was published, the flex and bison utilities have proven to be more reliable and more powerful than the original Unix tools.

flex & bison covers the same core functionality vital to Linux and Unix program development, along with several important new topics. You'll find revised tutorials for novices and references for advanced users, as well as an explanation of each utility's basic usage and simple, standalone applications you can create with them. With flex & bison, you'll discover the wide range of uses these flexible tools offer.

Address syntax crunching that regular expressions tools can't handle
Build compilers and interpreters, and handle a wide range of text processing functions
Interpret code, configuration files, or any other structured format
Learn key programming techniques, including abstract syntax trees and symbol tables
Implement a full SQL grammar-with complete sample code
Use new features such as pure (reentrant) lexers and parsers, powerful GLR parsers, and interfaces to C++

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From the Publisher

This book shows programmers how to use two UNIX utilities, lex and yacc, in program development. lex and yacc are tools that help programmers build compilers and interpreters, but they also have a wider range of applications. The second edition contains completely revised tutorial sections for novice users and reference sections for advanced users. This edition is twice the size of the first and has an expanded index. The following material has been added: Each utility is explained in a chapter that covers basic usage and simple, stand-alone applications How to implement a full SQL grammar, with full sample code Major MS-DOS and UNIX versions of lex and yacc are explored in-depth, including AT&T lex and yacc, Berkeley yacc, Berkeley/GNU Flex, GNU Bison, MKS lex and yacc, and Abraxas PCYACC --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

Paperback: 216 pages
Publisher: O'Reilly Media (May 1990)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0937175498
ISBN-13: 978-0937175491
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (35 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,937,015 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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John R. Levine

Tony Mason

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Customer Reviews

35 Reviews

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41 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK for what it is, May 26, 2001

By	John (Southern California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: lex & yacc (Paperback)

WHAT IT IS: A sparse crash course in Lex and Yacc for those who already know (1) front-end compiler techniques (lexing and parsing), and (2) the C programming language. If you meet both these daunting prerequisites and can use a bit of sample code to get going, this might be for you, but be advised that the Yacc example is only an interactive calculator, not a mini-language. Includes a reference section on Lex and Yacc, sections on Yacc ambiguities and error reporting, and a small glossary which is nice except that the definition of LALR(1) is slightly off (the LR in look-ahead LR means, "Left-to-right scanning of input, Rightmost derivation in reverse)." I found the Lex and Yacc command line options in the examples to be valuable information.

The *useless* Yacc examples are at least complete; the ones I found on the web all required major surgery or additional pieces to work. The only problem I had with these was that the goofy version of Lex on my Slowlaris system gives an error if the first line of the translation rules section is a {substitution} --once I replaced that with the corresponding regular expression it worked fine, and so did the rest of the code that I ran in chapters 2 and 3. You might have to do similar tweaking.

WHAT IT AIN'T: A primer on compilers or parsing (neither are some of the books purporting to be such, for that matter). There's no mini programming language example. And of course it does not promise nor cover code optimization or compiler back-end stuff like code generation.

WHAT IT COULD: I would like more examples --ideally, a mini-language compiler that reads source code from one file and puts output (say generated code quadruples) in another. And maybe a parser for some kind of output stream. Chapter 4 on a menu generation language and chapter 5 on a SQL parser (included w/ DBMS) are not needed today as far as I know --but I admit that's not very far. :-)

WHAT IT CAIN'T: I winced in sympathetic frustration as I read a scathing review screaming bloody murder that this book explains "NOTHING!!!" I know where that poor guy was at, and his frustration is understandable. This book is no substitute for a course on automata theory that covers regular expressions and context-free grammars, plus a *good* compiler course (those are hard to come by) that covers chapters 3 and 4 of the "dragon book." The dragon on the cover of that book symbolizes the complexity of compiler design, correctly indicating that this is a recondite subject. If you are writing your first parser on your own without a solid understanding of terms like "regular expression," "NFA," "CFG," "state diagram," and "LR," then you do not realize the odyssey you are embarking on and this little book on Lex and Yacc won't save you. Many students of Computer Science (including yours truly) regard compilers as the hardest subject.

NOTE: Are there dudes out there without all that Comp Sci background who can write parsers? You bet! It can be done, and there are many books on parser construction now. This book doesn't get into that.

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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Incomplete, poorly organized, and not very well written, April 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: lex & yacc (Paperback)

As with several other O'Reilly books, I found Lex & Yacc to be maddeningly uneven. The approach is to give a too-brief synopsis of the tool, then illustrate its use using a very specific example that, one suspects, is merely the handiest project the authors had available.

I had a fair bit of programming experience when I bought the book, but none with Lex or Yacc. Some fundamental questions came up during the course of my muddling through, and these were left unanswered. I actually got more insight into these tools from a ~20-page web site on the topic.

The reference chapters are organized alphabetically ("ambiguities & conflicts", "bugs", ..., "%ident declaration"), and in a way that does not help someone who is looking for a specific answer (in trying to find out about the possibility of more than one parser in a program, who would think to look under 'v' for "variant and multiple grammars"?). These 'reference chapters' seemed more like a place to dump the information not discussed elsewhere.

Maybe it's a lost cause, finding a comprehensive, well-written introduction to such an arcane topic, but I'm still looking.

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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars ok, but there is a better LEX/YACC book, April 26, 2004

By	M. Rumore (Oswego, il USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: lex & yacc (Paperback)

To keep it simple, the book "Introduction to Compiler Construction in UNIX" introduces and explains LEX/YACC far better than this book. It uses a more realistic example and shows the error handling in more detail. This book is ok for a quick intro, but for a 'real" user, refer to the book I mentioned above.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Not bad, but not necessary either
You'd be hard pressed to argue the book does much more than reiterate the man pages and documentation for the two tools. Read more

Published 1 month ago by justin_v

5.0 out of 5 stars A compiler construction essential
This item is a definite must for coursework dealing with scanning and parsing. I thought that I would be fine if I just relied on web sources to assist me in Lex assignments, but... Read more

Published on October 21, 2007 by M. Zima

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book to have when using lex & yacc
I like this book because it is a good compromise between lex & yacc man pages and the theory found in books such as the Dragon book. Read more

Published on December 13, 2006 by Olivier Langlois

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a Mind Meld
To me a great book flows into your mind, magically providing the information in the order you need it. Read more

Published on August 22, 2006 by developer1

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good guide to an old but useful programming tool
Yacc (yet another compiler compiler) and its companion lex (lexical analyzer) are primarily intended to allow quick and easy development of small special-purpose languages. Read more

Published on June 25, 2006 by calvinnme

4.0 out of 5 stars Delivers what is say it will
This book is a little out-dated. That is fine, though - this book goes over all the essential proponents of Lex and Yacc and Bison and FLEX and all the other variations ... Read more

Published on June 24, 2006 by Travis Parks

5.0 out of 5 stars A very nice intro
About the previous review: if the book is "OK", why two stars? Nevertheless, the poster is correct in that the book by Alex Schreiner, Introduction to Compiler Construction With... Read more

Published on August 23, 2005 by J Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt

5.0 out of 5 stars Still the best lex/yacc intorduction out there!
Like many O'Reilly books, this is really just an introduction to
something that is hard to get intorduced to. Read more

Published on April 22, 2004 by Nathan Moore

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing
This book was disappointing. I had hoped for a tutorial and reference on Lex/Yacc Flex/Bison for building language recognisers, but in the tradition of "yet another boring... Read more

Published on March 12, 2004 by J. Buchanan

4.0 out of 5 stars This acts as a Helping hand for compiler developrs
Firstly there are not many books on Lex & Yacc.
Unix programming by Kernighan & Pike provides
some necessary information but it is not sufficient
to write a... Read more

Published on December 26, 2002 by Venugopal

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