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From: cl@lgc.com (Cameron Laird)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.programmer,comp.compilers
Subject: Give me your strings.
Keywords: C, lex, question
Message-ID: <1991Feb12.144738.11530@lgc.com>
Date: 12 Feb 91 14:47:38 GMT
Sender: compilers-sender@iecc.cambridge.ma.us
Reply-To: cl@lgc.com (Cameron Laird)
Organization: Landmark Graphics Corp., Houston, Tx
Lines: 34
Approved: compilers@iecc.cambridge.ma.us

I want to be able to type

	show_me_source_strings source1.c source2.c

and receive something like

	source1.c:	"This is a string in the C-source source1.c"
	source1.c:	"I'm a string too, passed to the function %s.\n""
	source1.c:	"I initialize a char *.";
	source2.c:	"Me too; I'm in the string-space of this program."
	source2.c:	"There's another string in this file, but it's in comments."

Is the point clear?  I'm looking for an executable that knows enough C
(or Pascal, ...) syntax to isolate string constants, and echo them out
to a file (possibly stdout).

It's easy enough to write a grep or sed or grep script that finds all
lines with a couple of "-s in them, but I'm curious whether there is a
Better (more accurate, powerful, ...) Way.  Is there a standard, modern,
low-cost fashion for getting at the syntactic elements of C source?  If
I became adept at YACC, could I code this up in two minutes?  Is there a
public-domain C parser that everyone uses to construct filters such as I
have in mind?  Has Harry Spencer written an awk program that does this,
or will emacs give it to me if I type CTL-\-ESC-ALT-&-F7-...?
--

Cameron Laird		USA 713-579-4613
cl@lgc.com		USA 713-996-8546 
[What you want to do is lexical analysis, and that's what lex and flex do.
Many C lexers are floating around the net; see the comp.compilers monthly
posting for some suggestions.  By the way, his name is Henry. -John]
-- 
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