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Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Misuse of lex
Message-ID: <7789@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 17-Mar-87 00:19:13 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.7789
Posted: Tue Mar 17 00:19:13 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 17-Mar-87 00:19:13 EST
References: <339@hscfvax.UUCP>, <240@uvicctr.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 13

> We gave up on lex a long time ago.  We wrote a replacement tool...
> one-third the size of the equivalent lex-produced code and runs twice
> as fast.  Look out for a paper in a forthcoming issue of Software-
> Practice and Experience that describes mkscan in more detail.

Also look at the proceedings of the winter Usenix conference for an
abstract (sigh, the paper didn't get in) of a talk by Van Jacobson of
LBL, explaining how to speed up lex so its scanners are faster than even
the best hand-cooked C code.  Van said he was going to post his paper to
mod.sources; hope it shows up soon.
-- 
"We must choose: the stars or	Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
the dust.  Which shall it be?"	{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry