Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Opinions on lex and yacc thus far....
Message-ID: <1988Mar3.184732.1144@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <8803012158.AA14617@decwrl.dec.com>
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 88 18:47:32 GMT

> So far, everyone agrees that:
> 
> 1)	lex is slow because it is so general.

Not quite true:  lex is slow because its implementation is poor.  Van
Jacobson of LBL gave a paper at Usenix a year ago observing that if one
reimplemented lex for speed, it could consistently outrun hand-cooked
scanners.  Unfortunately, his paper didn't make it into the proceedings,
and he appears to have broken his promise to post it to the net.
-- 
Those who do not understand Unix are |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
condemned to reinvent it, poorly.    | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry