To: "Schmackpfeffer, Craig" <Craig.Schmackpfeffer@usa.xerox.com>
Subject: Re: flex output for static code portion
In-reply-to: Your message of Tue, 11 Aug 1998 11:55:30 PDT.
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 23:57:42 PDT
From: Vern Paxson <vern>

> I would like to use flex under the hood to generate a binary file
> containing the data structures that control the parse.

This has been on the wish-list for a long time.  In principle it's
straight-forward - you redirect mkdata() et al's I/O to another file,
and modify the skeleton to have a start-up function that slurps these
into dynamic arrays.  The concerns are (1) the scanner generation code
is hairy and full of corner cases, so it's easy to get surprised when
going down this path :-( ; and (2) being careful about buffering so
that when the tables change you make sure the scanner starts in the
correct state and reading at the right point in the input file.

> I was wondering if you know of anyone who has used flex in this way.

I don't - but it seems like a reasonable project to undertake (unlike
numerous other flex tweaks :-).

		Vern