lex & yacc Second Edition

by Doug Brown (Author), John Levine (Author), Tony Mason (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-1565920002

ISBN-10: 1565920007

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This book shows you how to use two Unix utilities, lex andyacc, in program development. These tools 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 andyacc, and Abraxas PCYACC

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Editorial Reviews

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

About the Author

Gregory Satir helps develop online publishing tools in the Portland, Oregon, office of Electronic Book Technologies. He graduated with a B.S. in computer science from Brown University. Doug Brown is a consultant/contractor in Beaverton, Oregon. He has been developing software for circuit simulation, synthesis, and testing since 1977. Doug coauthored lex & yacc, another O'Reilly & Associates Nutshell Handbook. He received an M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1976.

John R. Levine writes, lectures, and consults on Unix and compiler topics. He moderates the online comp.compilers discussion group at Usenet. He worked on Unix versions Lotus 1-2-3 and the Norton Utilities and was one of the architects of AIX for the IBM RT PC. He received a Ph.D in computer science from Yale in 1984.

Tony Mason is currently a member of the AFS development team at Transarc Corporation, a small start-up company specializing in distributed systems software. Previously, he worked with the Distributed Systems Group at Stanford University in the area of distributed operating systems and data communications. He received a B.S. in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1987.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ O'Reilly Media; Second edition (February 1, 1995)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 388 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1565920007
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1565920002
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.22 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.95 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,022,721 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #54 in Software Utilities
- #304 in Unix Operating System
- #631 in Computer Operating Systems (Books)

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Just a guy

Nice but incomplete

Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 1999

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This is a nice introduction for anyone who wants to start working with lex and yacc. What it explains, it explains well.
Unfortunately, there is much it does not explain at all. For example, how do I process conditional statements, how do I deal with functions and procedures, how do I incorporate classes in my language.
The book needs a second volume which picks up where this one ends.

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efrankamo

I like this book because it covered parsing and tokenizing from ...

Reviewed in the United States on November 6, 2015

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I like this book because it covered parsing and tokenizing from a deeper standpoint. Will re-read a few more times.

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Keith Savage

Best book currently available on the subject

Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2000

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Lex & Yacc are extremely powerful programming tools. They are also difficult to master. This book provides a good start. You may need to read it several times and work through the examples before things begin making sense. I also recommend the FSF's book "The Bison Manual" for indepth info on the most common Yacc-compatible parse generator.

One person found this helpful

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Katrina

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2017

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A classic book

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Roger George Doss

Classic book.

Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2015

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Classic book.

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bezier

Pure happiness

Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2013

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Very nice but hang on, because it is tough business. On another hand, if you want to build a compiler...

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Very good guide to an old but useful programming tool

Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2006

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. The common mistake is assuming that they are only useful for creating compilers for massively complex eccentric languages. This is not the case, though you could no doubt use them for such a purpose.

Lex and Yacc are commonly used together. Yacc uses a formal grammar to parse an input stream, something which lex cannot do using simple regular expressions since lex is limited to simple finite state automata. However, yacc cannot read from a simple input stream - it requires a series of tokens. Lex is often used to provide yacc with these tokens. As a result, building an application in lex and yacc is often used as an exercise in classes on programming languages and the theory of computation to demonstrate key concepts.

The book starts out building a simple character-driven calculator, and then moves on to build a menu generation language that produces C code that uses the standard "curses" library to draw menus on the screen. The final application is a SQL parser which includes a quick overview of both relational databases and SQL. Some readers will dislike the fact that Lex and Yacc are only capable of generating C code. Thus, the logical conclusion is that you must be able to write C code in order to use these tools. While it would be nice if the sections about the menu generation language and the SQL parser had some information about how to do typechecking and other such things, this book is not about writing a compiler/interpreter using Lex & Yacc. Rather it is just a beginner's guide.

The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts are especially helpful, as are the sections going over the differences and caveats relating to the major versions of lex and yacc such as AT&T's Lex & YACC, GNU's Flex & Bison, and Berkeley's Yacc. In summary, if you've never used lex or yacc before and think they might be useful tools for you, and you already know the C programming language, this is a handy book to have.

5 people found this helpful

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developer1

Not a Mind Meld

Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2006

To me a great book flows into your mind, magically providing the information in the order you need it. Of course it depends on whose reading it, but this book, though well worth the 96 cents bargain bin price I paid for it, does not build the constructs in my head the way I'd like.

Authors should always proofread their books with novices, not the experts. Experts fill in the gaps as they read and don't notice if the logic is missing a link. In chap 2, "Using Lex", there is the sentence: "Lex itself doesn't produce an executable program; instead it translates the lex specification into a file containing a C routine called yylex(). Your program calls yylex() to run the lexer."

I waited with baited breath for what it means to "run the lexer". Does it return a token each time you call it? Does it analyze all the input then return? The text ignores this detail and merrily goes on into other details. The chapter is called "Using Lex", but the authors omit how you use it! Of course you can scrounge around in the examples and finally root it out, but a book should paint a crystal clear picture, get you oriented, then drop in the details to build your understanding.

The book looks so promising, sort of like the beauty of the original "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan and Ritchie, but disappoints in it's fragmented exposition.

I did take a compiler course with the "dragon book" years ago and write a parser, so I'm not totally in the dark, but I expected this book to lay the subject out in a much clearer way. But it is still a good book to have and read "offline".

I hope the authors take a crack at another edition and explain it all better.

7 people found this helpful

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M. Friedl

It's all about languages...

Reviewed in Germany on January 8, 2014

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First of all I would like to put a focus on the general appearance - unlike many other ebooks this digital edition displays passages containing source code or graphics clearly, with a good contrast and excellent readability. Good layout job by O'Reilly.
Lex and yacc are powerful tools for software engineers, providing efficient ways for parsing source code (and lyric works, if you write any...)
On the other hand, versatility goes along with complexity. Doug Brown understands how to systematically dissect the field into consecutive steps, each accompanied by well chosen examples, leading the reader safely through the jungle of regular expressions, EBNF, symbol tables, grammars and tokens. This book is a good refresher for experienced software developers but a beginner should be aware that the study of the art of compiler construction is inevitable to fully deploy the massive amount of knowledge packed up in this book. Surely not a bedside reading, as you feel the urge to hack in the lines of the examples and see what they do. Considering the mature state of both tools I was not sure if this edition was a good choice - now I am glad to own it.

Sergio Slobodrian

Gold mine of tips for using these tools.

Reviewed in Canada on February 25, 2018

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There are lots of good tips here. I've been using Lex and Yacc for 20 years and there are lots of good tips that make your lex/yacc more useful. The menu example is really dated though and could stand a refresh thus the 4 stars.

One person found this helpful

Bortoli Sandro

Libro assolutamente da avere

Reviewed in Italy on January 20, 2015

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Mi sono imbattuto in questi due tool linux durante i miei studi e questo libro mi ha dato una grossa mano a capirne meglio il funzionamento. Consigliatissimo, ben scritto e ricco di esempi pratici

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Poupougne

Livre de référence

Reviewed in France on January 5, 2014

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Pour comprendre et appréhender les principes des analyses lexicales, syntaxiques et sémantiques, le livre idéal. Même pour le faire autrement qu'avec lex/yacc, car cela permet d'apprendre les principes.

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Ghislain Foulquier

Tres bien

Reviewed in France on March 17, 2013

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Le livre (d'occasion) est en tres bon etat comme il était annonce.
C'est un livre technique, connu pour son haut niveau, une sorte de
bible pour les specialistes, j'en avais besoin et ait été content de
le trouver chez amazon.

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lex & yacc Second Edition

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